


Hearthsong

by rosegardeninwinter



Series: The Snowstorm Universe [3]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Hunger Games, Autumn, Courtship, F/M, I would recommend lighting a pumpkin or apple scented candle as you read this, Sexual Content, Sweetheart Ribbons, Toasting, Virgin!Everlark, Wedding Fluff, Wedding Night, and probably too much time spent on the food and outfits, because it's what I did while writing it so, lots of songs, oooh I can use a Porchwood tag here:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:40:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27462085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegardeninwinter/pseuds/rosegardeninwinter
Summary: "I would never have believed this, years ago, that the boy with the bread would become my friend, my sweetheart. I would never have believed it if someone had told me I’d be full of anticipation for my wedding day. That sort of thing was impossible for the girl who survived day to day on what she could scrounge and shoot. She remains a part of me, that girl, afraid that the beautiful things she’s opened her heart to might be taken away at any moment. For some reason, she decided this was worth the risk."The third (and much longer) installment in the Snowstorm series! You asked for a toasting, and a toasting you shall receive.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Series: The Snowstorm Universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006437
Comments: 41
Kudos: 86





	Hearthsong

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a long set of author’s notes. I apologize.
> 
> First off, if you haven’t read the first two installments in this in Panem AU, Snowstorm and Dreaming of Violets, I highly recommend doing so. I don’t *think* you absolutely have to read them to understand this story, but it may increase your enjoyment by a factor of some number. 
> 
> As should perhaps surprise no one, I’ve drawn heavily on a number of my favorite aesthetics for this story: namely Porchwood’s delightful fairytales of Panem (I have to credit her for the brilliant invention of sweetheart ribbons as well), Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, Little Women, and *autumnal vibes* received from the universe. In so doing, I have created a Panem that is perhaps slightly dreamier and a Katniss who is slightly more romantic than in canon … but maybe a few years and the safety of your sister mellows you out a little. Who am I kidding? … it’s so sugary it’s going to rot your teeth. I’m sorry. This is just how it be sometimes. 
> 
> Special thank you to many, many people (full list on Tumblr), but especially to Lia and Terri for beta-ing (especially with that one scene, Terri - lifesaver!) 
> 
> Okay, I think that’s everything. Without further ado … Hearthsong.

It feels like any other Sunday, as Gale comes to collect me for our morning hunt. Our breath clouds the air as we make for the woods, which are yellow against the stark autumn sky. Once we’ve reached our rock, Gale snatches my knit cap from my head and snorts when he sees the red ribbon I’ve run through my braided bun.

“Last day to wear that, youngster,” he says in a fair imitation of Greasy Sae. “Tomorrow, you become an old biddy like my Madge.”

“Cut it out,” I chide as I unpack our breakfast, courtesy of Prim and Peeta. I was right to think they’d make good friends. They get along like a house on fire and are just as smothering. They conspire to indulge me. Today, it’s licorice tea and cinnamon buns. Peeta must’ve brought the buns over last night (surreptitiously handed in through the kitchen window, likely as not) and Prim kept them hidden away until she gave me my game bag on the way out.

Well, let the troublemakers conspire, because the combination of spicy drink and crackling bread is incredible. It doesn’t last nearly long enough between the pair of us, but the taste lingers on my tongue and my lips, warming me down to my toes even as a nippy breeze makes me pull my scarf higher on my neck. 

“Alright,” Gale says, swiping crumbs from his pants, “what’re we here for?” 

“Bittersweet vine,” I say. “For decoration.”

“Decoration? I take it this is Prim’s idea?”

I shake my head and his smile widens. “No, this is mine,” I say evasively, standing up and tossing him my bag to carry. I’m not about to tell him exactly why I want the twisty, flexible boughs of hearty berries. I don’t think he’d want to know, would grimace and groan if I told him. To be fair, until a few months ago, I would have done the same. Peeta brings out the sentiment in me.

The first time I brought Peeta out to the forest was a year ago, on a day colder than today. It was a Friday morning, and rather than taking a shift at the bakery, he came to our house. I greeted him at the back door, whispering that my sister and mother were sleeping in.

We sat at the kitchen table to eat a breakfast of rye bread and a rich, runny egg to soak it in.I took our most recent delivery of milk from the icebox and poured a cold, creamy cupful of the pricey treat to share. Out the window, the big fountain splashed and dry leaves skirted the dilapidated flowerbeds. 

“You’re wearing your ribbon,” he said, eyes bright over the lip of the cup.

“Oh.” I plucked at the messy knot I’d tied at the base of a half braid. “I — yes.”

“If I recall,” he said slyly, “you once told me sweetheart ribbons were ‘mawkish nonsense.’”

“They are,” I replied. “Complete mawkish nonsense. I don’t wear it in public.”

“Defeats the purpose a little, don’t you think?”

“If the purpose is to have a flock of girls squawking at you any time you set foot in town, then yes, it does.” We have sweetheart ribbons in the Seam, a lot of them family heirlooms, passed down like wedding rings and house keys. They’re faded and mended and sometimes they have the names of your grandparents or their grandparents embroidered in tiny lettering down the length of dyed wool or feed sack. A merchant’s sweetheart ribbon, real cotton or lace, is easily spotted — and on a Seam girl?

“Would it help if I wore a token too?” Peeta joked. “I think I’d look pretty, don’t you?”The idea of a dramatic curlicue of lace flouncing atop his unruly curls made me laugh.

“It would not,” I said, “and you would not.”

He did have a point though, about tokens. Traditionally, there isn’t one for me to give him. I know of some girls who make their sweethearts a patch to sew into the sleeve of their shirt or coat. My mother made my father a leather cord to wear around his wrist, threaded with a tin charm in the shape of an acorn. He wore it until he died. It’s buried with him somewhere in the mines, a piece of my mother, along with a piece of her heart.

I squirmed my shoulders at that unhappy thought. Patches and charms were nice tokens, but from my hands I thought they might be too formal. I could make him something from fur: a nice pair of rabbit gloves or a lynx hood.

Though, there could be no doubt where the pelt came from, with only two regular hunters in 12, one of them married for over a year. People would talk when news inevitably got out that respectable Farl and Marta Mellark’s son was courting Primrose Everdeen’s bony, scowling sister. I planned on keeping that news to myself for a long while yet. I hadn’t even told Gale, but even then, I think he suspected, throwing me sidelong glances whenever we headed into town to trade our kills. 

Now, as we tramp along the edge of a long-abandoned culvert, Gale gives a short bark of amusement.

“What?”

“We never come this way. This is the longest way back to the fence.”

“So?”

“But it’s the easiest way,” Gale points out. “Slower going, but smoother. Easier for a townie to navigate.” He catches up and slings an arm around me. I scowl, but don’t shrug away the friendly weight. “You want bittersweet vine because it was growing the first time you brought him out here.” 

“Don’t tease.”

“I’m not, Catnip,” Gale says. “I’m not. It’s just — I never thought we’d end up this way.”

“What way?”

“Gone soft for a pair of chubby cheeked townies.”

“They’re not chubby cheeked!” I protest, but he’s got what he wanted. He’s made me laugh.

“No, but they used to be,” he says. “Up through fourth grade, I’d have mistook ‘em for chipmunks at a distance.”

“You’re cruel,” I say, lightly flicking his wrist.

“I don’t mean it, Catnip. It’s the eyes that does it, huh?” His tone has gentled. “Those blue eyes?”

I think of Peeta’s eyes, wide and mesmerized, as we took this very path, gloved hand in gloved hand, and nod.

“What do you think?” I’d asked, craning my head back to admire the scarlet foliage, sunlight drifting through the mist. The air was quiet, but quivering with life: the flap of a bird’s wing, a squirrel springing from branch to branch, the distant sound of the river.

“It’s … I don’t have the words.” Peeta’s grip on my hand had tightened. “It’s like a — another world.”

I dropped my voice to confide, “My father used to tell me that the woods belong to no one. No Capitol, no Peacekeepers. That’s how it’s always been, since the first trees grew. The woods are their own.”

“‘The woods are their own.’ That’s beautiful.”

My father loved this time of year. “The best songs are about autumn, catkin,” he would say, and list his favorites. _Gold Up in the Mountains_ and _Hickory Choppin’_ and _Harvest Moon._

I’m humming that one, keeping time against my hip, as Gale and I pick our way down the slope, out of the woods. My bag is slung over his shoulder, heavy with our forest haul, the vines peeking over the top of the fabric.

“Is that going to be your hearthsong?” Gale jokes. Harvest Moon is a macabre song, full of dark reaping humor. It’s a good dancing tune, but you’d have to be out of your mind to play it at a wedding. “‘Come dance with me in the fields tonight,” he sings, “the ghosts will join us soon. The boys and girls, dressed all in white, by the light of the Harvest Moon.’” 

“I don’t know what my hearthsong will be. Prim and my mother are picking it,” I say. “But no. They’ll pick somethingnice. Something like yours.”

“Madge picked ours,” Gale says, as we slip through the fence, listening for electricity out of habit, but hearing nothing. “Otherwise I think her mother would’ve had us doing all six stanzas of _True Love’s Treasure._ ”

I grin at the thought of twenty-odd hardened Seam folk warbling their way through that syrupy ballad in Hazelle Hawthorne’s living room. It’s my turn to tease Gale, breaking into the first verse before he can stop me. He does try, but I shove his gloved hand away from my mouth and adopt a high, drawn out croon.

“‘True love’s treasure, more precious than gold. More precious than anything this world can hold.’”

“I’ll tell your sister you want that to be your hearthsong,” he crows. “I’ll swear up and down.” 

“She’ll never believe you,” I shoot back. “‘True love’s treasure, young heart’s desire. Young heart’s —” I grab the bag from him and clasp it to my heart with a gasp“—purpose and passionate fire!’” 

Gale stops. He studies me, a faint uptick in his cheek holding back a smile. I frown under his gaze.

“What?”

“You’re singing. I like hearing you sing. You never used to.”

I almost wish he hadn’t brought it to my attention. It’s true I gave up singing for years after my father died, except to lullaby Prim. It was too painful otherwise, always half expecting that rich, husky voice to join in harmony alongside mine, getting only silence.

My father should be here tomorrow, of all days, for my wedding. He’d get up early in the morning and fell a wild turkey for the occasion, or maybe he’d be at home, helping arrange the house for guests. He’d take me aside once I was dressed up to my mother’s satisfaction and ready to go sign the papers. He’d talk to me, some last word between father and daughter before the commotion. I don’t know what he’d say. Something earnest and simple. Something thoughtful and loving. Something I’ll never get the chance to hear.

But he’d be happy for me — and he’d like Peeta, a lot. Those things I am certain of. It’s because of Peeta I started singing my father’s songs again, after all. It was a week before his birthday, last November, and I asked him what he wanted as a gift. He smiled and said he didn’t need anything from me, but I was determined to wheedle something out of him. He thought about it for a moment, then asked me for a song. That was all. Just a song.

I’d balked at first, felt myself starting to stammer out an answer as to why I couldn’t, and he’d backtracked. I scowled at that, more at myself than at him, and told him firmly that he’d get his song, but that he had to stop being so generous to me. He’d refused, but seemed pleased I agreed to his gift. I could almost feel the warmth of my father’s smile on my shoulders as I trudged home, grumbling to myself.

I agonized over what to sing for Peeta the rest of the week. I didn’t tell anyone about it, not even to ask for ideas. I went through every song my father ever taught me as I lay awake at night. None of them seemed right.

I watched the shadow of a tree sway against Prim’s armoire, catching the light of the cold November moon and throwing shapes over our walls. Where did my father’s songs even come from? I knew some came from the mind of his mother, a woman I never met. Some of them were older than Granny Everdeen, parts of our history from long, long ago, back when Panem was called North America. There were a handful he invented himself, but he always said he was more of a mockingjay than a true songbird, always copying. I liked all his songs … especially the made up ones. 

“Miner boy!” Madge’s call brings me back to the present. She stands on the porch, Roan on her hip, and a tin mug of something hot in her hand.

“That for me?” Gale takes a deep inhale of what I now smell is coffee.

“No, but this is,” Madge counters neatly, handing his son over to him. Gale laughs and bounces his son in his arms, earning him a gummy smile and a burst of incomprehensible toddler babble. Gale nods wisely.

“Is that so, young man?” he says. “Then we’re in agreement.” He turns to his wife. “Roan is on my side about the coffee,” he informs her.

She holds out the mug to me instead. “I don’t like coffee,” I say. “I think you may be trapped, Madge.”

“It would seem so,” she says. She gives Gale the coffee and a kiss to sweeten it. “What’s biting this morning?” she asks.

“Bittersweet vine,” my friend says. He throws me a wink over Roan’s head and I’mpositive he’s going to taunt me more about Peeta, but he only says, “Prim’s idea. She’s decorating for tomorrow.”

He’s not so bad, Gale.

Madge invites me in for breakfast, but I have other plans. I thank Gale for going out this morning and give Madge a hug that smells of fancy merchant soap.

“I can’t wait for tomorrow,” she says. “It snuck up on us!”

It certainly did sneak up on us: autumn, this week, the hours already slipping into tomorrow. But it’s more than those things, at least for me.

Love itself snuck up on me, awakened me slowly, like a spark in stubborn kindling, and I didn’t notice how completely the fire had consumed me until I was past caring, already reveling in the heat and color.

Prim greets me from the breakfast table when I arrive home and I knock my shoes clean at the front door. “What’s that all about?” she laughs over her own cinnamon bun and tea.

“What’s what all about?” I lay the bundle of vines down on the table and sit across from Prim.

“Your face,” she says. “You’re all glowy.”

My expression instantly drops into a scowl at her description, but Prim only laughs more. “Did you get everything?”

“I think so.” I pluck at a bittersweet berry until it comes loose from the stem and I roll it between my fingers. “These. The candles.”

“Oh,” Prim says, snapping her fingers, “We found Granny’s candlesticks this morning! They were at the bottom of the hope chest.”

  
“Really?” I perk up. Our mother, already busy with making the house ready for guests, had been rummaging through closets and boxes for weeks trying to find my father’s mother’s copper candlesticks. I told her we didn’t need them, but she was persistent, telling me every bride in my father’s family since the Dark Days has had these candlesticks to light her bedroom the night of her toasting. I managed to keep from reminding her that’s only a handful of women at best, and now I’m glad she found them, if only so we can focus on something else for the rest of the day. 

“Where is she, by the way?”

“Town, getting food.” Prim finishes her tea in a gulp and hops up. “You want to go get everything set up?”

I smile at her and say I’d love to. I’m thankful, as we make our way up to the guest bedroom, that I don’t have to move out of my sister’s house after tomorrow. Peeta felt bad about that at first. Not that he wanted to live with his family any more than I did, but because he felt like it was his duty to provide me a home of my own.

“We’ll have one some day,” I promised him, “We’ll build one together. It’s just for now, while we save up.” That promise—plus the fact that Prim adores him and has all but moved him in already—settled it.

It’s lunch by the time we’re done upstairs.

“It looks like you,” Prim says, surveying our work. It’s my turn to laugh. I don’t think it looks like me at all. I would believe this indulgent fantasy more of Prim than of myself. I tell her so.

“I like it too,” she says, bumping my hip with hers, “but it was your idea.” She twirls around to stand in front of me and clasps my face in her hands. “You’re blushing,” she chirps.

I bat her away. “Stop it,” I say, bringing my own palms to my face to cool it.

“It’s beautiful, Katniss,” my sister says more seriously. “Peeta’s going to love it.”

That’s enough to stop me second guessing.

“Maybe we should put something on the armoire though,” I say. “It’s a little bare with just the candlesticks.”

“No!” Prim says quickly. I raise my eyebrows at her and she adds, with that innocent evasion I’ve learned never to trust, “I may have something for it.”

“What do you have?” I probe.

“It’s bad luck to see everything before the wedding!” she says and darts around me to get out the door.

“That’s not how that goes!” I say, hurrying after her, our feet loud as I chase her down the stairs.

“Just trust me!” she says, swinging herself around the bannister, and nearly running over our mother in her haste. I expect her to say something hampered and exasperated to us, but she doesn’t. She shoulders the satchel she’s carrying and holds out a package to Prim. I recognize Rooba’s handwriting spelling out that my mother has purchased ham.

“We’ll bake that in a brown sugar glaze,” she tells us. “That was a New Year’s treat at Lacey Abbot’s when I was growing up. Least when her uncle could get it.”

“That — ” I want to protest that this is too extravagant, too expensive, but I catch myself. It isn’t my money they’re spending — and the supper they’re planning for my toasting will feed our friends and family better then they’ll have for the rest of the year. Not to mention we have few things to celebrate in 12. What kind of person am I if I begrudge my mother and sister their party — and for _my_ toasting to boot? “That sounds amazing,” I say instead, and really, it does.

She and Prim talk about their other plans as we sit around the table for lunch: plans for squash soup and roast potatoes, honeyed apples, and spiced cider.My mouth begins to water. Prim says something about cornbread and my thoughts drift to Peeta. I go by the bakery most Sunday mornings to trade squirrels and rabbits with Peeta’s father — and with Peeta himself of course, though I take payment from him in kisses and sugared pecans. I take my plate to the sink and tell my family I’m going to the bakery but that I’ll be back to help get the house ready later. Neither of them object. (The old wives’ tale about not seeing the bride the day before the wedding has very poor stock in 12). 

In fact, they seem keen for me to go. I roll my eyes as I put my boots on. This can only mean more mischief. I take my cap from its hook on the wall, then pause. Before I can convince myself out of it I undo my braided bun and let it fall into a single plait, Peeta’s red ribbon proudly on display in my hair, even when I put my cap on. I slip on my gloves and step out into the chilly afternoon.

Town is its usual one o’clock busy. The streets and sky are gray as coal dust and people’s breath clouds the air in front of their faces as they rub their hands together or cluster around trash can fires to keep warm. But there’s always a brighter atmosphere in the early autumn, in spite of the cold. The starving days of winter haven’t yet set in, and most of us are just glad the reaping is almost a full year away. Brave souls steal past the fence for apples, and a stubborn banjo or fiddle can be heard in the market on weekends.

A handful of people I know—miners who knew my father, my customers from the Hob—wave at me as I go by. I catch sight of Rooba outside the butchery and shout out a thank you for the ham. 

“That’s a pretty ribbon, girlie,” is her response, which I take as a “you’re welcome.”

I groan inwardly when I approach the front door of the bakery. Peeta’s mother is working the front counter today. All of a sudden I’m glad for the ribbon and I tuck my braid over my shoulder so it’s more prominent as I shove open the door to the sound of a bell.

“What can I get for — oh.” The witch’s voice is as sour as always. It becomes more sour still when she spots me. It’s no secret she thinks her son is debasing himself by marrying a Seam girl. Even though my sister is 12’s only living female victor, richer than most of Panem, and could easily pass for a merchant girl in a pinch, my coloring and features are all my father’s. All Seam. I lift my chin higher.

“Peeta here?”

“He’s busy.”

“In the back?” I ask, as though she’d answered my question plainly.

“I said he’s busy,” says Mrs. Mellark, standing in my way as I make for the back.

I cock my brow. “Making our toasting cake, I assume?” I say cooly and her nostrils flare. A cake is not a staple of toastings, and hardly anyone in the Seam can afford them, but when you’re marrying a baker’s son, there’s no getting around it. “I’d like to see my fiancé, please,” I state. 

Mrs. Mellark’s jaw works, a tic her son has inherited from her, though it looks ugly in her disdainful face. She turns away from me and stomps back along the counter, hollering, “Peeta, your little Seam …” —and her sneer at me conveys what she was going to say, even though she amends it to _girl_ — “… is here!”

I don’t wait for Peeta to come to me. I march right into the back of the bakery and find him working rounds of cake out of their pans and onto the counter. His face lights up at the sight of me.

“I thought I heard your voice,” he says. He frowns in the direction of the front. “She didn’t give you a hard time, did she?”

“You know,” I say, winding my arms around his middle, never minding the flour, “I think she and I have something special.”

He laughs and I catch the sound with my mouth as I arch up on tiptoes to kiss him. His lips chase after mine when I draw back, getting in another kiss before he’s satisfied.

“You’re wearing your ribbon,” he says, stroking it between his thumb and forefinger. “In public.”

“Last day to,” I remind him. “I thought I might make it count.”

“I bet you’ll find some use for it after tomorrow,” he teases. “Make it into shoelaces or something.”

“No,” I say, “I wouldn’t. I’ll — ” I hesitate. What I should do is put it away for my son or daughter, if I were ever to have one. I won’t, so I’ll have to find some other place for it, but I have no intentions of throwing it in the ragbag. It’s too precious to me for that. My hand joins his over the cherry red strand. “I do like it, Peeta. I’ve always liked it.”

“I know that,” he says. “I’m the one who keeps telling you you’re more a dreamer than a pragmatist, aren’t I?”

“I think you did that to me,” I accuse him, as he bends to kiss along my braid, grazing my temple and my neck in the process, which makes me shiver. “Peeta,” I warn.

“What? We’re going to be married in twenty-four hours.”

“Not quite,” I say. “We go to sign the papers at three.”

“Twenty-six hours then,” he says. I yelp as he scoops me up and sets me on a clean counter. “Then you’re all mine.” His tone sends another shiver through me and in turnabout, I try to mimic that lower register.

“Oh, is that what you think?” I say. “I was under the impression _you_ were going to be all _mine_.”

“Semantics,” he says. “Katniss Everdeen is marrying me. That’s all I care about.” He leans up as I lean down and I hum into his mouth. It’s funny, but sometimes I feel like we’re still at the beginning of our courtship, sneaking away to share kisses where no one will catch us. We’re far past those innocent, silly days, but it’s nice that the way my toes curl when we steal moments like this hasn’t changed. My parents were like that. I know because I caught them against the woodpile when I was six, my mother’s face like a strawberry and a basket of wildflowers upended by my father’s feet. I was confused then, but I smile about it today.

I kick my feet against the counter like a child as Peeta pulls a bowl of something creamy towards him.

“What are you making?”

“Frosting,” he says. “For our cake.”

“What kind is it?”

I never had cake before Prim’s victory. We only ever pressed our faces to the bakery window to admire the designs. They were done by Peeta’s hands, though I didn’t know it at the time. He’s treated me to a number of cakes before—lemon, almond, blackberry—but the bite of cake scrap he offers me is unlike any I’ve seen before. It’s red, the color of my ribbon, but instead of some sort of fruit flavor, which I’m expecting, the taste of cocoa melts in my mouth.

“It’s chocolate,” I say, stunned. Chocolate is one of the priciest imports you can get in Panem. The tins of cocoa powder Prim has sent from the Capitol are decadent, and even though we don’t have to scrimp and save anymore, we measure out the spoonfuls judiciously. For a cake … Peeta must have saved for months.

“A sweetheart cake for my sweetheart,” he says. “Took me forever to find the right dye mix. Just wait until it’s frosted, Katniss. You’re going to love it.”

“I already love it,” I say. “It’s … maybe the best thing I’ve ever eaten. You sure we can’t eat it now? We’ll have plenty of other food tomorrow.”

“Greedy girl,” he admonishes. There’s that tone again. If that tone’s going to become a regular occurrence in our marriage, I might have to go speak with the clerk about getting our appointment at the Justice Building moved up earlier. “I won’t say the idea of eating cake hot out of the pan isn’t appealing.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Not least because it would send my mother into a conniption.”

“She’s not coming tomorrow, is she?” I don’t say this smugly. Peeta’s mother should be the first person to congratulate him on his engagement, should share a dance with him tomorrow, should give him a quilt square to start our toasting blanket with. But what should happen … won’t happen. It’s like my father. Peeta’s mother may not be dead, but she’s as good as for all the care she gives her son.

Peeta shrugs. “I’d be shocked. I don’t want her there anyway.”

“Yeah…” I say. I feel the mood shift and I regret bringing his mother up.

“But I think Bannock’s coming,” he says, brightening. “So that’s good.” Peeta has told me very few things about his brothers, and I didn’t exactly stop to chat when I came to trade with them. They’re not close, but Bannock seems to be the more decent of the two. The middle brother, Brann, is the black sheep of the family. It baffles me that Peeta came from such a home. It strengthens my resolve to make sure not a day goes by that he doesn’t know I’m glad he’s mine.

“Hey.” I reach for him, take his hand. “I’m — I’m really, really excited about tomorrow.” I’m not very good at saying what I know in my head and heart. I try for him. Since I’m about to vow myself to him in front of about twenty people tomorrow, I might as well practice. “I’m excited to be your wife.”

My previous protests about twenty-six hours flee my mind as he pulls me to him. My legs wind around his waist, anchoring him to me against the cabinets as we kiss. “I’m — I’m excited — Katniss — let me get a word in. I’m excited to be your husband.”

I would never have believed this, years ago, that the boy with the bread would become my friend, my sweetheart. I would never have believed it if someone had told me I’d be full of anticipation for my wedding day. That sort of thing was impossible for the girl who survived day to day on what she could scrounge and shoot. She remains a part of me, that girl, afraid that the beautiful things she’s opened her heart to might be taken away at any moment. For some reason, she decided this was worth the risk.

“I should go,” I say after a long moment. “I promised my mother and Prim I’d help get the house in order.”

“Okay,” he says. “Prim told me to bring my things over tomorrow morning? I don’t have much. Probably all fit in one box.”

“That’s right,” I say. “We’ve got your room all set up. Our room, I mean.”

“Our room,” he says longingly. “Katniss…”

“I know.” I feel like I could stay here for the rest of the day. We could be married right now if we wanted, some rebellious part of me complains. I’d toast him with a stale slice of sourdough, and the oven as our fire, forgoing the traditions of 12 and the legal business of the Capitol’s register. I could be his wife before the hour’s out. It’s like I said. Our room is ready. But it’s that thought that stills me. I want tomorrow, the ceremonies and surprises, to be special.

“I should go,” I repeat, almost a whine.

Peeta picks me up from the counter, placing me on my feet. “I have to make our toasting bread too,” he says, “and I’ll never get it done as long as you’re here. Go home and get ready, troublemaker.”

“If you didn’t want me to be a troublemaker, you shouldn’t have made a chocolate cake for our wedding,” I quip back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says at the back door, kissing me hard and making me fumble for the door handle.

I swing the screen open, breaking the kiss. “Go make our toasting bread,” I order playfully as I back down the steps, leaving him shaking his head fondly at me.

Prim and my mother are busily reorganizing the house when I return. I put my things away and set to helping Prim arrange chairs from the kitchen in the living room. We have much more space than the Hawthornes did at Gale’s toasting, but we get blankets from the linen closet and neatly fold them on bare spaces of floor around the fire, like Hazelle did.

My mother sets the kitchen table with a cloth from her childhood, all embroidered. She gets out the nice china that came with the house. She completes her work with a centerpiece inthe middle of the sea of plates and silverware: a pair of tall purple candles and a few pinecones.

She and Prim must have been foraging while I was away, because the sink is full of late autumn blooms. Our mother arrays candles on the brick of the hearth and on every windowsill, while Prim and I run chains of colored paper around the bannister. The stars are out by the time we’re done. I’m tired and hungry, but it’s a pleasant feeling. Not the gnawing kind I once experienced, but the kind that comes after a good hunt.

Prim and I go upstairs as soon as we’ve finished dinner. I realize with a twinge that this is my last night sharing a room with my sister.

“Can I stay here?” I ask once we’re both in our pajamas, lying down on her bed.

Prim smiles as she clicks the lamp off, leaving the moon to see each other by. “Course you can.” She cuddles up next to me like she used to before the Games. She’s far from that frightened girl anymore, but she’ll always be my baby sister.

“You nervous?” she whispers. “About tomorrow?”

“A little,” I admit. “It’s — it’s so different from everything I thought — ”

“Well,” Prim says, “if it makes you feel any better, it doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“It wouldn’t surprise you, you meddling matchmaker,” I say. I poke her in the ribs and she squeaks. I haven’t let her forget that incident with the violets, though to this day she feigns ignorance.

“Seriously though,” she says, “it doesn’t. You’re like Pa. What I remember of him, anyway. You feel everything so … so deeply, Katniss. Maybe you don’t like to let yourself, but you do.” She props herself up on her arm. “Mom says I used to cry when you would cry.”

“When we were small, yeah. You did.”

“I think it’s because I could feel it,” she says. “What you were feeling. Even if I didn’t understand.”

“What am I feeling now?”

“You’ve got jitters,” she says, “but I’d think something was wrong if you didn’t. You’re happy.” She studies me, giving me the same searching expression she’d give a book. “You’re afraid to be as happy as you are,” she says gently, “but you shouldn’t be.”

I exhale softly. She’s right. I am afraid. Afraid that I’ll wake tomorrow and the dreamy house, and Peeta’s delicious sweetheart cake, and everything else I was so reluctant to open myself to—knowing if it was taken away it would shatter my heart to pieces like the mines they bury under the tribute pedestals—will be gone.“How do you know that?”

She shakes her head. “You’re my sister,” she says. “Katniss, you’ve spent your whole life caring for others. You saved our family. You raised me. You’re the reason I didn’t go insane after the Games.”

I blink, stunned at her candor. She almost never talks about the Games. What I know about them I know from what I saw on the screen … and what I gathered from her nightmares.

“But I can take care of myself. I can take care of our family — and I want to.” Prim takes my hands in her own, one skin and one metal, and squeezes them. “It’s time for you to enjoy what you want, Katniss. I think you’ve earned it.”

“He reminds me of you,” I whisper. “Kind, generous … wiser than you have any right to be.”

“That’s quite the compliment,” she whispers back.

“He makes me hope, Prim,” I say. “He makes me hope so much it scares me.”

“Don’t be scared.” There’s an intensity in her voice I haven’t heard since she spoke about her allies from 11 at her victory interview. “Don’t be scared to hope, Katniss. Not ever.”

There was a time when I thought Gale was the sole voice of defiant fervor in my life, the only one brave or foolish enough to rail against the Games, the conditions in 12, all of it. But he isn’t. Maybe he never was. I just didn’t see it.

There were two times during the Games that I almost didn’t recognize my sister for the fire in her eyes. The first was when she buried Rue in flowers. The second was when she gave Thresh our traditional funeral salute as her victory trumpets blared over his dead body. She’d used her bad hand too, the one she lost soon after, bone exposed and bleeding, the makeshift bandage at her wrist held together with a gold pin.

A pin Madge gave her. I think she did it because of me, but Prim wore it like a charm, a lucky talisman of home. It bears the symbol of a mockingjay. I’m glad the Capitol audience didn’t take the mimicking bird that was never meant to exist as a slap in the face. I’ve never asked Madge where she got it, but it seems Gale’s “town girl” has a rebel streak somewhere too.

I remember last summer when Peeta spoke about their marriage, Madge and Gale’s, as a kind of revolutionary thing itself. Ignoring the unspoken division between town and Seam. The division his mother never lets us forget, and that I think even well-meaning folk balk at. Our toasting tomorrow is a defiant thing, a stubbornly hopeful thing. This thought doesn’t dampen my nerves. It might even increase them, the thought that marrying Peeta is a dangerous sort of act, but I’m strangely exhilarated at the notion that he and I are doing something entirely of our own choice. Something that goes against what is expected of us. Something we want. Something good, and right, and ours.

“You do need to sleep, though,” Prim says in an undertone, and I can tell she’d rather stay up talking under the covers like little girls. We used to, before our father died and our childhood ended abruptly. We’d pull the quilt up over our heads and whisper together, doing our best not to wake our parents in the bed beside ours. I told her stories. She’d tell me about the animals or plants she saw that day. Sometimes I’d sing. I think my mother might have heard me a few times, because the next day she’d be humming my lullaby as she swept the hearth.

“Prim?” I ask. “Did you decide on a hearthsong?”

“Mom did.”

“It’s not _True Love’s Treasure_?”

“Not even close.” She scoots closer to me, and wraps her arms around my middle. I hold her tight. “Katniss? Can you sing to me one more time?”

“Don’t sound so final about it.”

Prim smiles. “Didn’t mean to. You know you have an open invitation to bunk here if Peeta’s being trouble … though, the chances of that happening … I might as well get rid of the extra bed now.”

“Oh, shut up,” I say, and drop a kiss on the crown of her head. “He can be as big of a pain as you can.”

“Like I said,” she preens, “I’ll move the bed out next weekend.”

I don’t sing the Meadow song to her anymore. She says it makes her think of Rue, makes her sad. I decide on something that always makes me think of our parents: _Sweet Like Cider._ My father liked to change the lyrics to fit my mother’s name where the phrase “this girl of mine” ought to go, so I sing his version.

_Don’t tell a soul_

_They’d only be jealous_

_Cause I’ve got a girl_

_Sweet like cider_

_Sugar and spice_

_Like I’ve never tasted_

_Drunk on your love_

_My Caroline_

There’s five more verses, and the last notes of my song end on a yawn as I drift away into a deep, peaceful sleep. I don’t even realize that night has turned into a pink morning until I wake to it, slowly, blinking and stretching my back.

I’m alone. Prim’s already gone. Her outfit for today is laid neatly out over a chair, crowned by a circlet of twine and the flowers that share her name. My own dress is the one I wore to Madge and Gale’s toasting, my grandmother’s, a rich red. Like my sweetheart ribbon and my cake. Prim decided it should be mine to keep, and my mother fixed the neckline and waist to fit me. I’ll wear it with my boots and some woolen stockings. It isn’t anything like the white heirlooms some families have, like the dress my mother was married in, but I could marry Peeta in my hunting gear and I doubt he’d mind.

It’s my hunting gear I dress in when I get up, my trusty boots and my father’s jacket. My mother will want to start getting me ready hours before guests arrive, but I have something important to do before I submit to her soaps and combs. I hear her voice coming from the guest bedroom and I pause in my doorway. I’m curious as to what she and Prim are up to, but I recognize an opportunity for a stealthy escape, so I don’t linger. I leave them to their devices and let myself out the back door.

It’s colder than it was yesterday and I jog to warm myself up as I make for the Seam. The miners will have gone down for their morning shift, but their families may sleep for a little longer, and no one is around to ask me what I’m doing as I let myself into the tiny shack where I was born. Officially, this is mine and my mother’s place of residence. If something were to happen to Prim, we’d be evicted from her house in the village and sent back here. It isn’t for that reason that I’ve kept the place as tidy as I can, coming by on Sundays after hunting to clear cobwebs and shoo mice. It’s the memory of my father. This was his home. I can’t let it fall into disrepair.

It’s been some time since I’ve lit a fire in the old grate, and it takes a few tries before I manage to get it going. I would have wanted to go to the lake, but I’m not risking the smallest chance of being caught past the fence on my wedding day. I sweep dust from the hearth, sending motes up to float in the pale light from the clouded windows. I sit down and listen to the quiet.

“Hi,” I say at last. I take a deep breath, letting my shoulders rise and slump with it. As I exhale, I feel tears prick at my eyes. My father would never mind if I cried. I let the tears come. “I miss you. I want you to be here. Want you to sing my hearthsong.”

 _My catkin._ I startle as the fire, crackling and popping and whispering as the wood burns, seems almost to speak in my father’s voice. _My songbird._ There’s no shortage of ghost stories in 12, and my father never tired of spinning fairytales for Prim’s bedtime, but despite my violet-tinted dreams last summer, I have a hard time believing there’s room for truly mystical happenings in Panem. I must be imagining that the flames murmur my childhood pet names, but I’ll take even a trick of my mind as a gift from my imaginative father.

“You’d love what Mom and Prim did to the house,” I say. “You’d love Peeta’s cake.” I wipe my face on my jacket. “I don’t get it,” I hiccup. “I didn’t want this.” I take another deep breath. “Mom says you were the same as me.”

“Your father loved more fiercely than anyone I’ve ever met,” my mother told me the morning I agreed to court Peeta, “and more cautiously.” She glanced at his picture over the mantle, wistful, but not that awful, blank distance of years ago. “He loved me for a long time before he gave me his heart, but once he did … ” She smiled tenderly and trailed off. “You’re like that too, Katniss.”

“She’s right.” My chest, already aching from my cry, aches in a kind of joyful relief as I say it. I never like to admit when my mother is right—and I’m sure if my father were alive he’d reprimand me for some of the things I’ve said to her—but that morning she cut to the truth I’d been hiding from like she was wielding a surgical knife. “I want him. I love him. Like you loved her. Like you loved all of us.” 

The fire is unresponsive, but its light, mingling with the gleam of autumn sunrise, makes the dilapidated shanty look lived in again. Makes it look like a home. Like the home my father carried my mother into on their toasting day, alyssum petals flying from her hair as he spun her around and around.

I stand. It’s time to go. Time to let the past have its privacy. I put the fire out and lock the house behind me. I slip one glove back on, but let my bare palm linger on the door, as a _thank you_ , _I love you_ , _goodbye_ to my father. If there is any room for ghost stories and fairytales in Panem, it’s safe behind this door, preserved like a leaf in amber.

I put my other glove on and return to Prim’s. The kitchen is empty except for the cat, so I help myself to a slice of sourdough Peeta brought a couple days ago and smear it with Lady’s goat cheese. I dig around in the icebox for a big piece of cold chicken and throw it to Buttercup in a show of good faith. He accepts it and doesn’t hiss at me. We’ll call a truce for today.

I sit at the table to eat my breakfast and watch the cat find a place on the stairs to sun himself and chew on his bribe. I pick my plate up to clean it in the sink. Buttercup is licking his fur when I go by him on my way to my room. I pause at the sound of a bath running. My mother, no doubt. The cat swipes a paw over his ears and stares at me. I nod as though we are in solidarity.

“My turn,” I lament to him as my sister emerges from the guest room at the sound of my footsteps. It’s barely nine in the morning and she looks far too giddy already.

“You were out early,” she says. “Where’d you go?”

“The old house,” I say. “To visit Pa.”

“I’m glad,” she says and hugs me. “You okay?”

“I am,” I promise. “So, what’s the damage here?”

“Peeta brought his things by while you were out. I’ve got him all set up. Took about five minutes.” She inclines her head in the direction of her room. “Mom has some things for you,” she says, “and I’m going to Haymitch’s.”

“What for?”

“None of your concern,” she singsongs. “You’ll find out soon enough. Go see Mom.”

Prim’s wedding clothes are gone from her chair in our room, but mine are laid out on the bed. The skirt of the red dress is smoothed out in a fan that’ll fall below my knees when I put it on. I’d planned on wearing some old brown stockings to keep warm, so I’m surprised to see a pair of brand new stockings folded on my pillow. I pick them up and examine them. They’re long, made of black wool with a corded knit. They’ll come up past my knees and look like they need to be tied to stay in place, though I can’t find an accompanying garter. I make note of these details in a second, but what captures my eye is the embroidery. Hand-stitched flowers circle the top of the stocking and traipse down the back of the leg to blossom at the toes. They’re small and nondescript, with white petals, redcurrant centers, and green leaves surrounding them. It’s katniss. My namesake. My mother must have done this. I am overcome by a wave of gratitude that washes away my cynicism about whatever primping she plans to do to me. It must have taken her weeks to make these.

My mother is bending over the tub in Prim’s bathroom, checking the temperature. There’s a paper sewing box, pattern peeling at the edges, sitting on the tile beside her, holding glass jars of dried flowers and powders of some sort. There’s also, strangely, a pitcher of milk. She’s humming under her breath.

“Mom?”

“There you are,” she says, rising to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I can tell she’s in a very good mood and I’m not about to spoil it. “Did you see your stockings?”

“Yeah,” I say. “They’re really pretty. You didn’t have to do that … ”

“It was nothing,” she says. She gestures to the bath. “There’s an old tradition in my family. I thought you might like to take a bridal bath.” Her demeanor’s grown hesitant and I feel bad at the idea that she’s worried I’m going to shut her down. It’s this that makes me quick to nod and peer curiously at the sewing box.

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll take one. What — what is it?”

My mother glows and I find her spirits oddly infectious. “Well, first we start with the milk, for nourishment, ” she says, and picks up the pitcher. “Don’t worry,” she calms me as I wince at the waste of food, “it’s barely more than a cup.” She tips the pitcher over the tub and pours a splash. The water fogs up just like a cup of tea with cream and sugar, the way I love it, the way Peeta hates it.

“Go on,” my mother encourages serenely. “Get in and I’ll tell you the rest.”

My lips twitch in amusement, but I do as she says. I undress to the sound of her clinking around in the sewing box, and climb into the milk bath. Immediately, I’m glad I agreed to this. The water is hot and melts the chill that clings to me from my walk, leaving my muscles feeling heavy and relaxed. I slide into the water up to my chin and I hear my mother laugh.

“Nice, isn’t it?” She holds up a large bundle of dried lavender and runs her hand over the sprigs, coming away with a palmful of purple buds. “So,” she explains, “every girl’s bridal bath is her own. My mother decided what to put in mine. Your great grandmother died before my mother had her toasting, so her aunt picked the herbs out. And so on. Each one means something different.” She sprinkles the lavender into the bath and I breathe in the floral scent, effectively stopping myself from making a comment about her turning me into a soup. “Lavender is for nerves,” my mother says knowingly. “We usually always add that one.”

She unstoppers a thin necked bottle and drizzles some liquid into the bath. “Swirl that around,” she instructs.

“What’s that?” I ask. “It smells like vanilla.”

“Close. It’s almond oil,” she clarifies. “For stepping into a new life.”

I have no clue where these meanings come from. I suspect most of them are made up or were lost to history after the disasters that shaped Panem. Almond oil for stepping into a new life?

“Cardamon,” she says.

“To keep me from pruning?” I quip. 

“No.” My mother fixes me with the closest thing to an impish look I’ve ever seen on her delicate features. She swishes her hand in the water to disperse the spice. “I doubt you’ll have need of it until tonight,” she says. “It’s for passion.”

“Oh.” I snap my mouth shut.

My mother continues, playful. “Don’t worry. Your sister and I will be safely away at Haymitch’s until lunch tomorrow.”

“Mom,” I groan, covering my flushing face with my wet hands.

“Alright.” She puts me out of my misery and puts the cardamon back in the sewing box. “Now, I’ve left a vial of Rachel’s Wort extract by Granny’s candlesticks,” she adds, teasing aside. “Don’t forget to take it after — ”

“I won’t,” I say firmly. I can’t get pregnant. That was my one stipulation for Peeta, to which he agreed without a hint of argument. No children. I won’t carry them and love them and lose them to the Games. I can’t. The girl in my violet vision, the one Peeta had called his willow catkin, will stay safe in that dreamscape forever. 

Finally, my mother tosses a cascade of scarlet blossoms into the water. I recognize them without her telling me.

“Red aster.”

“For unity,” my mother says. “If there’s anything I hope your father and I taught you …”

“You did,” I say. My mother’s faults have always been more apparent to me than my father’s, more perfect in my memory than he was in life, but if she did set an example for me, it’s of that. She and my father were one. They faced everything together. They respected each other, even if they didn’t always agree, and they didn’t. I remember them arguing about money, about my father’s hunting, about songs my mother didn’t like me singing. But my father never failed to give her a kiss on the cheek the next morning, and my mother never failed to be standing by the door to welcome him home in the evening, carrying a rag to wipe his weary face. 

That’s what my mother wants for me and Peeta. “You did, Mom,” I repeat.

“Good,” she says, and I don’t miss the note of relief in her voice. She hesitates like she wants to say something else, but bites her lip around it. “Well.” She claps her hands and sets to packing up the bath supplies. “I’ll leave you to enjoy and we’ll start working on your hair in … an hour? Or so?”

“Yeah. That sounds great.” I suddenly want to say something more to her, something about how I love her in spite of our baggage, how as I grow older I gain more pity for her, how I’m glad that she’s fighting. How I fear I’d be the same, in her shoes. If I lost Peeta … but that’s why I’m never having kids. I won’t abandon them like my mother did me. I won’t give myself the chance.

“Hey, Mom?” I catch her right as she’s about to leave. “This is really special,” I tell her. “Thank you.”

She smiles and for a second I glimpse the girl she was when she married my father, the girl that people called very beautiful once, the girl who cooed as I stumbled into her arms after my first baby steps. “You’re welcome, Katniss.”

She shuts the door with a light click and I sigh a deep, relaxed sigh as I melt into the bathwater. The aroma of the herbs and spices is heady and warm and comforting. Decadent. I cup handfuls of water and spill them over my knees. My mother’s blessing. I can think of it that way, I think. I’ll allow myself to. To accept her gift.

Gifts. I’ve been showered in gifts today. More than I deserve. Far more. I’ll have to think of a way to repay them next week.

I’m roused from a cat nap by the bath water growing cool around me. My mother’s let me rest longer than an hour, judging by the angle of the sun. Reluctantly, I drain the tub around me. Then I refill it with fresh water and thoroughly wash my hair and face, scrub my body. I’m eager to be clean, but not to rinse the scents of my bridal bath from my skin, and I’m relieved to find the almond and lavender and cardamon still cling to me once I’m wrapped in a towel.

I dry my body and wring out my hair. It isn’t time for my red dress yet, so I grab my nightgown and sling it on. I open my door a crack, call down the stairs to tell my mother I’m done, then pull a chair in front of Prim’s floor length mirror.

“It smells so nice in here,” comes Madge’s voice as she steps into the room. In the mirror I see she’s wearing a pale yellow dress and her hair is loosely curled.

“Hey,” I greet her.

“Your mom’s outdone herself,” she says, sitting on my bed.

“She has,” I agree. I exhale in disbelief. “It’s just too much, Madge. Too much for me.”

“That’s unfortunate,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve got some things for you too,” she says, and from behind her back she produces a pair of boots. They’re almost identical to my hunting boots, made of tightly laced leather, but they look new, the insides lined with rabbit fur, and the soles sturdy. I gape.

“Did Gale — he didn’t — ” I set them on my lap and examine the handmade shoelace hooks.

“Madge … ”

“Don’t thank us yet.” She lays another gift across my knees, a heather gray shawl. “I’m afraid that one’s on loan only,” she says. “It was my auntie’s. But I think it would go nice with your dress.”

It would. Gale and Madge’s thoughtful offerings have all but completed my wedding outfit. All that’s left is something to hold my stockings up and I think I have an idea for that. I can’t wrap my mind around what’s inspired this indulgence from everyone. I wonder if the same expense has been spared for Peeta. He deserves these nice things more than I do, with his appreciation for beauty. His family wouldn’t ever be as good to him as mine has been to me. He has lots of friends from school though. Clara Finch and Rigg Menninger and Anise Hartsop. Delly Cartwright, who’s as good to him as a sister. Some of them are coming today … and I have my presents for him … but can that be enough?

Madge seems to be tracking with my thoughts because she smiles at me. “Gale and the baby’ve gone to the bakery,” she says. She twiddles with the sleeves of her dress for emphasis as she explains, “Cufflinks.”

“Thank you,” I exhale, relieved.

“It’s nothing.”

“No, it is,” I say softly. “It really is.”

“Days like this I can almost forget …” She pauses. We’ve never confirmed it, but Prim suspects all victors’ houses are wiretapped, and you don’t finish a sentence the way Madge was about to when someone might be listening in. Days like this she can almost forget where we live, what our reality is.

“Let’s forget,” she urges me. “For one day. Let’s just forget.”

“Okay.” I decide to do as she implores. Just for today. It can’t hurt. “Okay.”

Prim and my mother join us and set to work. It’s not the swarm of chittering I anticipated, perhaps unfairly. The four of us chat quietly as Prim towels and combs out my hair. Madge sits on the bed and catches my mother up on the Hawthorne family’s news. Roan teething, Vick apprenticing under the blacksmith, Posy excelling at math in school.

When my hair is dry and smooth, my mother takes over, deftly weaving a crown of milkmaid braids. Once it’s secured in place, Prim pins a scattering of white asters among the twists, like tiny stars in a black night. They get my crimson dress and help me into it, adjust the sleeves and the hem. I pull the black stockings on and ask my mother for her sewing scissors. She gets them for me and I measure out my sweetheart ribbon, make sure it’s long enough before I cut it in half, and use the pieces to garter my stockings above the knee. I smile to myself as I fashion a tight bow. Peeta will be surprised when he discovers them tonight. My toes curl in my new boots at the thought.

“You look like a fae girl,” Prim says when I’m finished.

I don’t think I look like a fae girl. I think I look like plain Katniss—made lovelier by the people who love me—but still myself. I like that. I wouldn’t want to look different.

I can’t say the same for the house. I’ve never thought of it as beautiful, but it is today. More than beautiful, maybe even. Enchanted is the word that comes to my mind. I might not be a fae girl, but I would believe myself out in the forest, among the fantasies of my father’s wandering imagination. Evergreen garland. Blue sage and willow leaved sunflowers. Candles twinkling in every nook and cranny, like will o’ the wisps.

The smell of food fills the kitchen, and serving bowls are already loaded with potatoes, carrots, squash soup, and peas.

“Ham’s in the oven,” my mother informs us, more completing a verbal checklist than expecting a response. “Rolls. Grits. We’ll do the honeyed apples and Prim’s cider when we get back. That should be all.”

There’s a knock at the door. “Hello!” comes a familiar voice. “Everyone decent?”

“Dressed, yes,” Madge says as she opens the door to her husband, sporting their son in one arm. “Decent, remains to be seen.”

“Mom and the others’ll be along soon,” he says.

“Rory get off his shift alright?”

“Yeah, barely,” Gale says. “Hasn’t been working as long as I have so the foreman only let him take a half day,” he explains to me. “Least he let him take time off at all. Nice boots,” he adds.

“You didn’t have to — ” I start, but Gale holds up his Roan-free hand.

“Not about having to, Catnip. I wanted to. Delly’s folks did half the work anyway. You wouldn’t want them if I put the soles on.”

“I love them,” I say. I give his cheek a peck and give Roan’s one too. “How’s — ?”

“Can’t wait to marry you,” Gale says, bumping my shoulder. “Though his parents seem underwhelmed, judging by the shouting.”

“Oh no,” I sigh. It isn’t fair that Peeta’s morning shouldn’t be as charmed as mine has been. I’m kicking myself, wishing we’d offered to let him sleep in one of our spare rooms yesterday. This is the last morning, I promise myself. Peeta has told his father he’ll keep doing the cakes for him, but he’s arranged his shifts so he doesn’t have to work alongside his mother. No more starting or ending the day listening to arguments echo up and down the stairwell. I glance at the clock. One hour and that’s over for good.

“It’s okay, Catnip,” Gale assures me. “I don’t think anything could upset him today. You ready?”

“Yeah,” I say. And I am. My stomach is full of butterflies. I’m running my thumb and forefinger up and down the excess fabric of Madge’s sash. But I’m ready.

The hour goes by fast. Hazelle and Gale’s siblings show up, Posy fresh from school with her book bag slung over her shoulder, Rory’s hair wet from a quick bath. They’ll stay here with Gale and Madge to welcome guests and make sure the food stays warm. Posy sits on the couch to pass the time with homework and my mother offers everyone tea and a buttered roll, which are hungrily accepted. Prim and I sit at the breakfast table, watching Vick help his nephew toddle around the living room.

I’m expecting a knock at the front door, but fifteen minutes before we’re meant to leave, a blond head pops up in the window over the sink. “Cake delivery!” Peeta calls out, startling my mother, who is busy cleaning the apples for honeying.

“Young man!” she chides, though there’s no real reprimand to it. I fly up to let Peeta in as my friends laugh at his antics. He’s being silly because he’s as nervous as I am. That sets me a little at ease.

It’s a short lived ease though, because my heart gives a great, slamming leap as soon as I open the door. Peeta’s wearing his coat and a buttoned shirt that matches my sash almost exactly, though that couldn’t have been planned. His pants are neatly ironed and his shoes … they’re as new as my boots, practically shining. I bet Delly’s family had a hand in that too.

But this all seems unimportant in comparison to the way his nose pinks and the way his cheeks dimple when he smiles. To the way the afternoon sun, copper as the borrowed cufflinks on his wrists, brings out the undertones of gold in his curls and in those long eyelashes I’ve always been fascinated by.

“Do you need help?” I ask before I can say something stupid. He’s carrying the sweetheart cake, and a basket is crooked in his elbow, holding a wrapped loaf of bread.

“That would be much — oh.” Whatever quip Peeta was about to make dies in his throat and his breath hitches. “You — ” 

“Don’t drop the cake,” I laugh shakily.

“I should’ve known that’s why you’re marrying me,” he says. “Free treats.”

“Someone say treats?” Prim cuts in, saving the cake. “Posy, the bread.”

They spirit the baked goods away and Peeta’s hands frame my shoulders. I’m not sure if he’s steadying me or steadying himself, but either way, it’s working.

“Mrs. Everdeen, the house is — ” He gazes around like he’s in some sort of dream. “And you — Katniss — you’re — ”

“Promise me you’ll be more eloquent at the toasting?” I tease.

Peeta sputters in mock indignation. “Let me get my bearings before you lay into me, woman.”

“Shut the door as you do,” Madge says. “For those of us who aren’t hotboxes.”

“This cake is gorgeous, Peeta,” my mother says, unboxing it — and it is, of course. Double layers of red velvet in a buttercream frosting, drizzled with maple syrup, decorated by frosted berries that tumble over the sides to surround the base. The cake is topped with a twist work of spun sugar branches that cosily house a pair of marzipan birds. It’s too pretty to eat. Well, almost. I’m sure we’ll make quick work of it later. But for now —

“Alright, Caroline,” Hazelle shoos, pulling my mother away from the oven where she’s obsessing over the ham. “Leave the hospitality to me and go get these two married.”

Gale raps his knuckles on the table in agreement. “We want to have something to celebrate when the hordes descend.”

“I thought Bannock was coming,” I say to Peeta as Prim and my mother go to get their coats.

“He’ll be at the Justice Building,” Peeta explains. “Bannock’s not much for parties. Or people.”

“We have that in common,” I say and he scoffs.

“Is this the same dress?” Peeta asks as I button my father’s jacket over it. “Your grandmother’s?” I know he’s thinking of that snowstorm a December ago, the one that’s somewhat responsible for us ending up here at all.

“It fits me now,” I say. “We fixed it up.”

My mother and I don’t say much on the walk into town, under the bright October sun, content to listen to Prim and Peeta chirp away like the birds on the toasting cake. I’m storing up my energy for the party, knowing everyone will want to talk to me then. I’m not looking forward to that. I hate small talk, and I only care to listen to a handful of people, most of whom are here with me, mounting the steps of the Justice Building. Bannock waits for us at the doors with his hands in his pockets.

“I can’t stay long,” he apologizes by way of greeting. “Only got an hour.”

“That’s alright,” Peeta assures his brother. “Just glad you’re here. I’ll send leftovers.”

“Not even Mom’ll refuse that,” Bannock says. He nods at me, grunts. “Hey, Everdeen.”

“Hi,” I say.

He does a once over of Prim, in her plum skirt, lace blouse, and gold earrings, one a flower, the other a crescent, like a harvesting scythe. She’s had them for years. They’re gifts from Cinna, her stylist, to honor her fallen allies. But of course, it’s impossible to ignore how expensive they are. The tiny flower has real diamonds at its heart.

“Don’t know why Mom’s mad about you marrying into this family, of all families, little brother,” Bannock says and Peeta’s jaw sets at the implication he’s marrying me for my sister’s money. I squeeze his hand and he squeezes back, doesn’t respond to his brother’s poorly timed comment.

I’m immune to it. I’m certain Marta Mellark has circulated any number of similar rumors as to why her son is marrying a Seam girl, from money to seduction to pregnancy. I also know that very few people will believe her. Peeta is well liked by pretty much everyone in town. And the people I grew up with think well of me. I can put up with the gossip. I don’t really care. 

What I care about is getting this official business over with. We step into the marble lobby of the Justice Building and I notice my sister’s shoulders tense up. The last time Prim was inside this building was the day of her reaping. She catches me staring and gives me a stern look. _I’m a big girl,_ it says. _Save the worrying for when you’re not getting married, how about?_

She’s right. On both accounts. She is a big girl, a woman. It’s time for me to treat her like one. I push worry to the back of my mind.

Perhaps not so surprising for a Monday afternoon, the building is mostly empty. There’s a handful of people waiting to speak to the clerk at the large, blocky desk. We sit along the wall on old benches until the clerk directs the last person out, then holds a brief conversation with the Peacekeeper on duty. Judging by their tones, the conversation isn’t about work. The delay annoys me. It annoys Bannock too.

“Peeta, if she doesn’t hurry up I’m not going to be able to stay,” he complains.

“That’s fine,” Peeta says, but I can hear the disappointment. I wipe the irritation from my face. Not today, I remind myself. I lean up and kiss Peeta’s temple and I feel his cheek lift as he smiles. Finally, chuckling at something the Peacekeeper has said, the clerk waves us to the front.

“Marriage license?”

“Yes,” I tell her.

She pulls out a filing drawer with a track that scrapes shrilly, and rifles through it for a moment before she finds the pieces of heavy parchment she’s looking for, stamped with the Capitol crest.

“Read thoroughly and answer all questions truthfully. Everything you report will be cross-checked with your official reaping file. When you’re finished, spouses sign here and here. Witnesses here.” She points to the designated lines.

This is why no one in 12 feels married until the toasting. There’s nothing special, or ritual, or even romantic, about this process. Peeta and I trade the pen back and forth, filling in details about our birth dates, families, occupations, income, and so on. At the bottom, I have to sign my maiden name. After today, it’ll be changed to Katniss Mellark. It stings, having to give up my father’s name, but I comfort myself with the thought that it’s not Peeta’s family I’m uniting myself to. It’s just him. I’m okay with that.

I print _Katniss Everdeen_ in neat, clean handwriting, and as I hand the pen back to Peeta to sign his own name, I feel a strangely giddy feeling go through me, despite this being a government formality.

Peeta has an artist’s script, the kind of cursive writing I could never master in school. The K in Mellark sprawls over the signature line and he punctuates it with a flick.

“Twenty six hours … done,” he says triumphantly, hands the pen to my mother, and hoists me up so my tiptoes barely touch the ground and I have to wrap my own arms around his neck to steady myself.

“Almost,” I remind him. That funny giddy feeling hasn’t subsided. I feel foolish, but that doesn’t stop me finding a light footing on the tops of his shoes. Besotted schoolchildren, the both of us. Besotted schoolchildren who are almost bowled over by Prim, finished doing her duty as witness, all but launching herself at us in a hug. I find myself squished against Peeta’s chest as Prim hugs my torso. They’re saying something over top of me, but I only melt into their shared embrace, closing my eyes. Held between the two people I love the most in the world, I’m not scared to be happy at all.

Bannock bids us congratulations and excuses himself to return to work, giving his brother’s hair a ruffle. “Mom’s crazy,” he says. “You’ve got a keeper, Peet.”

And that’s as ringing an endorsement as I’m going to get from my new in-laws. It makes me laugh, loudly, as I take Peeta’s arm, and we leave the Justice Building behind.

I can tell that our guests have arrived in the village as we approach the wrought iron gates. Prim pulls us up short at the fountain. “I’m going to make sure Haymitch is coming,” she says, hurrying across the courtyard. “Don’t start without me.” But almost as if summoned by her words, Delly Cartwright appears on our front porch.

“They’re back!” she shouts.

“One moment!” My mother saves us, hurrying up the steps to herd everyone back into the house. I hear her say something about clearing space as she shuts the door.

Peeta sits on the fountain edge and tugs me down to sit next to him, warming our hands in each other’s grasp.

“I don’t want to socialize,” I sigh. “I want to marry you, and have dinner, and go to bed.”

“We could always take the cake upstairs after the toasting and call it a night.”

“Tempting, but I don’t think my mother would ever forgive you.”

“I can live with that,” he says. “If my wife wants to make a quick escape, a quick escape we will make.”

“No, we won’t,” I call his bluff, playful. “Because you, husband, are a people person.” I tuck my legs up and put them over his lap. “But thank you.”

“I know you’re in there, Haymitch!” Prim is calling to her mentor. “It’s toasting time!”

“Did you invite him?” Peeta asks.

I shrug. “No. That’s all her, but I don’t mind. He saw the beginning of this.” I gesture between us. That night we stood right about here and Peeta confessed he’d come to ask to court me. I’d hesitated and Peeta told me he’d wait. I went to bed thinking I’d need him to wait for weeks, maybe months. I didn’t expect to have an answer for him the next day, showing up at the bakery, soaked through and blurting out a “yes.” He didn’t expect it either.

“I want to … go slow …” I’d told him. “This … may not end up the way you want … we want.”

“Okay,” he’d said. “You’re right. It might not. We’ll go slow.”

And now look at us.

“Alright, alright!” I look back at Haymitch’s, where Prim has proved successful. The surly drunk is dressed in what might have once passed for a nice suit. He seems more aware of his faculties than usual. I think my sister may have some kind of good effect on him, however lackluster the results.

“We’re ready now,” Prim informs me, skipping up onto the fountain edge like a dancer.

“Then let’s do it,” I say, standing.

“Wait!” Prim says as we start for the door. “You have to let us go in first — and you have to carry her, Peeta! It’s tradition.”

I hate attention, but Prim’s right. It would be rude not to let our guests sing the threshold song. I shrug and let Peeta scoop me up bridal style, my knees over his arms, my arms around his neck, as Prim pulls Haymitch up to the house.

“This is worse than a school presentation,” I whisper to Peeta, already half hiding my face in embarrassment.

“Oh, come on, Katniss,” he says, giving me a smacking kiss on the cheek. “We only get married once.”

Prim swings the door open to Delly’s eager face again. “Can we sing now?” she gushes.

“Yes!” Peeta calls back. “Sing away!”

Delly squeaks, claps her hands, and as Peeta takes the stairs she launches everyone into a song I used to lisp out from atop my father’s shoulders as a toddler, just learning the words. Now it’s Posy’s airy high notes, Gale’s raspy low notes. It’s Leevy Green barely opening her mouth, or Thom Lowing, loudly and eagerly off key. Hazelle’s deep Seam twang, or Madge’s enunciated syllables.

_though the heart be weary_

_sad the day and long_

_still to us at twilight_

_comes love’s old song_

_comes love’s old sweet song_

I take them all in as they sing, the people who are here to share our happiness. That funny mix that assembled at Gale and Madge’s toasting two years ago. An assortment of our old classmates are here, most of them Peeta’s friends, merchant kids, but a few Seam too. And people I know from the Hob. Rooba, hands clean, apron-free. Old Sae, with a cane instead of her cart to steady her. Ingalls, the man you go to for knick knacks and other oddities. I’d invited them on a whim a few weeks ago, promising food and dancing.

I’m pleased to see Darius here. I took a risk when I asked 12’s only decent Peacekeeper if he’d like to join us. Even though all the provisions for this evening were fairly bought and paid for—and in any case, Darius has never minded buying poached meat or stolen fruit, supporting what he calls “local produce”—I catch a couple of nervous glances his way. I’m not worried. He’s not like the Peacekeepers that come from the Capitol’s academy. He’s 12 born and bred, like all of us.

Peeta sets me on my feet as the song finishes. My heart feels warm, my head light, maybe a little dizzy. Our friends and neighbors are congratulating us, but I have eyes only for the boy in front of me.

“Hey,” I say, whisper almost, brushing a strand of hair out of his eyes. “Let’s get married.”

“I like that idea,” he says, like a secret.

I’m aware, but only vaguely, of moving to the unlit fire, of everyone gathering around, some sitting, some standing. Peeta and I kneel facing each other on the hearth.

There’s wood and kindling stacked, and a pair of long matchsticks. The other parts of the ritual sit beside. Bread is the only thing you really need for a toasting, but we have a jar of apple blossom honey to go with it. Strictly speaking, vows aren’t even necessary, but I’ve carefully rehearsed what I’m going to say for days. I’ve scribbled it over and over, to make sure it’s right. I’m sure Peeta’s vows will be spontaneous and perfect, but I need time to put to words what I want to promise.

Between the two of us, a coal miner’s daughter and a baker’s son, we have the hearth blazing in no time at all.

“Ready?” I ask Peeta. I pick up the toasting fork and hold it across my lap.

“My whole life,” he says. He tears a piece of bread from the loaf and my mouth waters. Golden, crackling crust with a soft, hearty center of nuts and cranberries and rosemary. He fixes the bread on the toasting fork and I hold it close to the flames. I never asked my parents why we have toastings, and our history books won’t tell you either, but it’s not hard to work out. In a district where starvation is the one consistent aspect of your life, it makes sense that our marriage ritual would be about providing for each other.

I love it. This is something tangible, something I can truly promise. If love is work, I’m ready to get to it. Ready to get my hands dirty, or burnt, or any of it, as long as Peeta’s are beside mine.

I take the bread from the fire and let it cool before I take it off the toasting fork and tear it in half, handing Peeta a piece. He catches my hand and presses it to his mouth for a long moment, as if to ground himself. I let my fingers linger against his lips. His expression is so intense, so unguarded, I feel the heat from the toasting fire come all over my body.

“Technically, I think we’re supposed to do this with the bread,” I tease.

“Oh yes,” he murmurs, eyes sparkling. “I knew we were forgetting something.”

I fold my hands in my lap as Peeta dips the bread in the jar of honey, careful not to drip any, and takes a deep breath.

“If I said everything I want to say to you, we’d be here well into tomorrow afternoon.” There’s a murmur of laughter before he goes on. “But I figure I have the rest of my life to tell you all of that. So, I’ll start here. You are the most blunt, scowlingest — ”

I roll my eyes at the made up word.

“— resourceful, hopeful person I’ve ever known. For some reason you chose me, of everyone you could have chosen, and I … I don’t have the words to say how grateful I am to be with you. To fight beside you, whatever the danger. To take care of you, whatever the work. To love you, even on the days I don’t like you.”

“Which will never happen, of course,” I say, and I kick myself for the choked, teary way it comes out. I was determined not to be weepy.

“Of course not,” Peeta agrees, and then, very softly, “I’m yours, Katniss.”

Everything I spent time writing and rewriting and memorizing flees my mind at his heartfelt words, at the taste of the bread and honey on my tongue as he feeds me my bite, and when it comes my turn to do likewise, all I can manage is, “I love you.”

I think I can count the number of times I’ve said those words to him on one hand. It’s not that I don’t mean them — it’s the opposite. Words come easily to Peeta, but actions come easier to me. I tell him I love him in unspoken ways. He tells me he loves me every time he opens his mouth to make me laugh, to confront me, to praise me. I keep my words bottled up tighter, like my mother’s most potent medicines, saving them for when I need them most. “I love you,” I repeat, “and I’m yours.”

It’s enough. His eyes light up like I’ve recited the most eloquent vow and they sparkle even more when I overdo it a little on the honey and have to catch stray drops as I hold the bread up for him to eat. The toasting promises that follow are as well known as the threshold song. I didn’t have to worry about memorizing these, and we say them in unison.

“In hunger and plenty, in peace and pain. By the work of my hands and the warmth of my hearth, with my body and heart, from today until our last day.”

And that’s it. I’m married. We’re married. The realization overwhelms me, part terror, part joy, and I steady myself by pressing my forehead to my husband’s and saying, “Okay, now twenty-six hours is done.”

“Not a moment too soon,” Peeta says, and kisses me hard.

“Alright, turtledoves,” Greasy Sae croaks from her chair and we break apart. “Caroline, I was promised cider.”

“That you were,” my mother laughs. “Newlyweds, are you up for dinner?”

From the circle of Peeta’s arms, I smile and nod. “If Sae’s up for it, I am.”

“It’s not just Sae who’s up for it,” Haymitch announces. There’s the scraping of chairs and embraces and kisses and clasped shoulders and general congratulations for me and Peeta as we all make our way to the kitchen where our incredible dinner is laid out.

“My offer to disappear with the cake still stands,” Peeta murmurs in my ear as we pick up our plates and load them up with food. I shake my head. I don’t want to disappear. For all my complaining about guests, my spirits are buoyed as they gather around the table for our little feast. People take small portions, ever rationing, until Prim declares that everyone has to have seconds and threatens that she’ll make the rounds to pile on more cornbread and ham herself if she thinks someone’s scrimping.

By the time I’m quite sure I can’t eat another bite, I find myself settled in Peeta’s lap on the couch, watching our friends and family, dispersed in various corners. Posy and Madge are curled up in the window seat. Darius and Thom are guffawing about something Leevy has said. Ingalls is regaling Delly with a story about acorn cups and thimbles. Prim is bouncing baby Roan on her hip. Sae sits in my mother’s rocking chair, nursing her cider, her granddaughter Lettie at her feet.

I think I could sleep here, the sound of conversation lulling me into a sleepy trance, but at some point my mother reminds us that there’s cake still to cut.

It’s as delicious as I remember from yesterday, even better, with the melt in your mouth frosting and toppings. The double tiers vanish in no time, but my mother whisks the marzipan birds away to the icebox for safekeeping. The sun is starting to set outside, red and orange blazing through the trees like its own toasting fire. Hazelle declares it’s high time for some dancing. Madge dusts off the unused piano that came with the house and starts to play a reel.

Prim grabs my hands and pulls me up out of Peeta’s lap to dance with her. Peeta takes this all very good-naturedly and invites Posy to be his partner. Darius sweeps Clara Finch off her feet and Gale pairs up with Delly. If there’s one thing we’re good at in 12, aside from making ends meet, it’s dancing.

Sae and Rooba, Haymitch and my mother, stand by and watch us skip and promenade and switch partners as Madge plays _Hickory Choppin’_ and _Goodbye Liza Jane._ They join in the singing when Madge plays _Rattlin’ Bog,_ the tempo getting faster with every tongue twisting verse, all of us getting gigglier as the lyrics get more complicated. These songs are really meant to be played on a banjo or a fiddle, not a piano. I’m in amazement at how Madge’s fingers dart over the keys to keep pace with our clapping and stamping.

“Slow song now!” she calls out at last. “I don’t have another reel in me!”

I find Peeta as Madge starts up a drifting, lazy tune.We’re sweaty and panting and he’s grinning ear to ear.

“Hi.”

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“Likewise,” he plays along. “You have a date tonight? Or might I have the chance of sweeping you off your feet?”

“Sweep away,” I say. “My feet could use the break.”

He laughs as I slump against him and our steps are significantly sloppier than they could be, but I don’t mind. Evening has fallen. It’ll be time for our guests to go home soon.Sure enough, as Madge finishes playing to loud applause, and people collapse into seats, Prim raises her voice.

“There’s just one more song to sing tonight,” she says, “and then we should probably clear out and let my sister and my new big brother have their toasting night.”

I blush and glare halfheartedly at her. It’s hard to be angry at my sister, shimmering in the candlelight as she beckons my mother forward to stand beside her.

In the years since my father died, I don’t think I’ve ever heard my mother sing, really sing, until tonight. And even at the doorway, her soft lilt got lost in the crowd. But there’s nothing to compete with her as she moves to stand in front of the fire and folds her hands neatly in front of her. “I was thinking … I’d sing it once. Then you all can join in if you like.” The song she sings is one I’ve never heard before, simple and quiet, almost a lullaby. I stand with my back to Peeta’s chest, pinioning his arms around my waist and letting him rock us slightly, as our friends and family sing.

_in blooming spring I’ll don a gown_

_in summer green, a flowering crown_

_in autumn gold you have my ring_

_in winter deep, my everything_

_in the morning share my bread_

_and come evening share my bed_

_you bring the honey, I’ll bring the wine_

_my heart is yours and yours is mine_

When my mother finishes, I don’t hesitate to hug her, squeezing her tight for a long moment. She turns her head to kiss my hair, where the wild asters have wilted.

“It was your father’s and mine,” she answers my unspoken question. “He would have wanted to sing it for you.”

“I went to see him this morning,” I confide in her. “At the old house.”

She touches my chin, a feature I inherited from him. “He loved you, little catkin,” she murmurs. “Loves you still.”

She turns to Peeta. “He couldn’t have asked for a better son,” she tells him. “Neither of us could have.”

Prim clings to Peeta’s waist like she’s about eleven years old and he plants a kiss to the crown of her head. “I always wanted a big brother,” she tells him.

“Ouch,” I retort and Prim rolls her eyes at me.

“Well, lucky for you,” Peeta tells her, “I always wanted a little sister.”

“I have an older sibling I could set you up with. If you felt like making this relationship official,” Prim jokes. “Fair warning: she’s a piece of work.”

“I think she’s perfect.”

My heart gives one of those stupid, nervous flutters at the timbre of his voice, and I convince myself it’s because I’m excited to show him what I’ve done to our room or watch his reaction to my wedding gift — and not for any other reason. It becomes noticeably harder to convince myself of that when the flutters increase with every guest that bids us goodnight and makes their way out down the front steps (with a tin of leftovers if we can persuade them to take it) and into the windy night, lit by a bright crescent moon.

At last it’s only us and the Hawthornes … and Haymitch, entirely at Prim’s behest, partaking of something in a silver flask while the rest of us enjoy a pot of basil tea. Roan is completely out of it, snoring in his mother’s arms. I sit next to Madge and marvel that such a tiny person can make such a racket.

“Maybe he’ll be a singer,” she whispers. “With lungs like that.”

“Or an auctioneer,” Gale jokes, standing behind the couch and rubbing his wife’s shoulders. “Mom and the kids are ready to go,” he informs her. “Think it’s time to get this one home to bed.”

“And this one too,” Madge yawns.

“The cold’ll wake you up,” Gale reminds her. The thought of the Hawthornes going back to the Seam in the icy dark makes me insist that they take extra blankets from our linen closet. Gale tries to say they’ll be fine, but Madge quashes his protests. Only once everyone is bundled up to my satisfaction, with a big jar of Prim’s cider and two lanterns between them, do I tell Gale they’re allowed to go.

I thank Hazelle for her help and receive an affectionate chuck of the chin in return. “It’s halfway down to you that our family had enough food to make it this far,” she says. That’s not true. It’s mostly down to her own resilience and hard work. That and Gale’s trapping skills. But she sees the protest forming on my lips and clicks her tongue. “I know what you’re about to say, young missus. I won’t hear a word of it.” She hoists the woven bag of leftover tins higher on her shoulder and winks.

Gale shakes Peeta’s hand and they exchange a few polite words. It’s still strange to see them together, my oldest friend and my new husband. They could hardly be more different. Gale: lean, and dark, and brusque. Peeta: stocky, and fair, and eloquent. But they seem to be getting along, which is as good as I could have wished, since they’ll be seeing plenty more of each other now.

Madge kisses my cheek goodbye. I retrieve her shawl from the chair where I left it for dancing and drape it over baby Roan. “There,” I whisper. “So I don’t forget to give it back to you.”

“You looked beautiful in it,” she says. “Everything was beautiful. Your cake, Peeta — ” She turns her attention to him and I turn mine to the last member of the party.

“Catnip,” Gale says, wry and warm, and I hug him, standing on tiptoes to wrap my arms around his neck. He chuckles against my ear. “Chipmunks.”

“Stop it,” I hiss, but there’s no bite to it. I’m so thankful for him, so thankful that our friendship has remained intact despite the chances it had to fall apart, so grateful that we’ve both found a heaping measure of goodness in a place that affords so little, that I feel my throat tighten, and I grip him harder. He doesn’t say anything else. We’re cut from the same cloth. He understands.

“What do you say, town girl?” he asks his wife, letting me go with one last squeeze. “Should we leave the lovebirds to it?”

Peeta and I lean on either side of the doorframe to watch Hazelle and her family out past the fountain and the gate of Victor’s Village, the light of their lanterns bobbing in the dark like yellow leaves in a black pool. I think I hear Gale start to whistle something as their whispers and laughter and shushing fade into the night.

Peeta crosses his arms and cranes his head back to look up at the sky.

“It’s like an archer’s bow,” he comments, inclining his head to the crescent moon. “Like there’s a huntress up there. Maybe she’s almost as good as you.” I knock my boot against his.

“What does that make the stars, then?” I wonder aloud. “Is that what she’s hunting?”

“I like that,” he sighs. His breath is a cloud in the cold. “Hunting the stars. What does she do with them when she catches them?”

“She …” I consider this for a moment before deciding I know precisely what the huntress does with her stars. I pluck one of the asters from my hair and hold it out to him. “She does that.”

Peeta takes the flower and makes a show of tucking it behind his own ear. “It’s not nearly as fetching as a ribbon,” he bemoans, “but I accept your token, my huntress.” He stands up from the doorframe and lifts my hand to give it a formal kiss. He turns my palm over and presses it to his mouth, dropping the fake formality. My fingers uncurl as he kisses, soft and slow, down to my wrist, to my rapid pulse. He lifts his eyes to mine and something passes between our gazes before his is overtaken by a sudden shyness.

“Don’t,” I say, though the wind is stinging my own blush. I lift up on my tiptoes, back him into the doorframe, and fit my mouth to his. His heartbeat is going even faster than mine and it sends a rush of boldness through me. “Don’t.” Emboldened, his fingers seek out the twists of my milkmaid braids, loosening them as he holds my head steady to reciprocate my kisses eagerly. “Don’t stop.”

“Oh for the love of — !” Haymitch’s offended exclamation startles us apart. He glares at us as he shambles out past, hollering over his shoulder, “Primrose! You and your mother better get yourselves packed and over to my place before these two consummate on the front porch!”

“Leave them alone, Haymitch!” Prim calls back. “We’ll be out in a minute!”

Haymitch waves her off and shuffles across the way back to his house, muttering under his breath.

Peeta makes a stifled sound, trying to hold back laughter.“He may have a point,” he admits. “It is freezing out here.”

Inside, the fire is embers in the grate, but the candles glimmer on. It’s like being underwater in the late afternoon, the light shifting lazily in my gaze. Golden hour, in the middle of the night. Prim and my mother are putting their coats on in the hallway.

“Doors are locked, oven’s off,” my mother reports. “The wood stove in your room is on, Katniss. Should be nice and warm. What am I forgetting, Prim?”

“Mrs. Everdeen,” Peeta interjects kindly. “Don’t worry about us.”

“Go and get some sleep, Mom,” I add. “You too, little duck.” They’ve done more than enough today. Spoiled us, completely.

Prim gives me one last hug. “Love you,” she yawns. “Love you too, Peeta. Welcome home.”

I watch Peeta blink in something like confusion, like it’s just sinking in. This is his home now. Here with me. He shuts the door and turns to me, a look of dazed delight spreading over his face.

“She’s right,” I say, echoing his thoughts. I wrap my arms around his middle and hold him tight, head on his chest. We stand there for a long moment, swaying a little, letting our minds quiet after the chaos.

_Home._

“Do you wanna go up? See our room?”

“I can’t wait.”

We snuff the candles, pausing to pour ourselves cold water and gulp thirstily, worn out from the revelry, smiling at each other whenever our glances meet. My nerves are quivering with anticipation (and some anxiety) as I take Peeta’s hand and lead him upstairs.

Though the gossip of what merchant kids were doing round the Kissing Oak, or where exactly Seam kids went off to after meeting up at the slag heap, couldn’t interest me less, I’m not ignorant of the goings on behind the closed bedroom doors of Panem. We’ve never been a prudish bunch in 12. I’ve even picked up a handful of clinical explanations from my mother whenever a young woman came around asking for fertility advice. This is different. I’m reassured by the reminder that this is as much a first for Peeta as it is for me. We’ll figure it out together.

But before that, my surprise. I pull Peeta up short by the door to our room. “Wait here,” I say. “I have … I made you something. Or — Prim and I made — let me just — wait here.”

Peeta’s nose wrinkles in confusion and amusement. “Okay.” He folds his hands like a little schoolboy about to recite in front of the class. “I’ll be right here.”

“I’ll only be a second.”

I dart into the bedroom. By the faint glow of the stove in the corner I find the matchbox on the armoire. Beside it, I find the things my sister didn’t want me to see before the wedding. Gifts, from her and my mother. There’s a large bowl filled with hot water, an embroidered towel draped over it. (I can guess what that’s for, with the vial of Rachel’s Wort extract beside). On one side of the bowl, a lumpy parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, atop a box done up similarly. On the other side, two glasses and an elegant bottle of … maple whiskey? I’m bewildered at this last offering until I read the note that’s affixed to the front.

_Haymitch advised me that it isn’t a toasting without a toast. Truth be told, I think he likes you two._

_\- P_

Leave it to Prim to cajole a wedding present out of Haymitch Abernathy. I do a once-over of the room, of myself in the standing mirror. Satisfied, I cross the door and lean my forehead against the pale green paneling.

“Peeta?”

“Yeah?”

“Close your eyes, okay?”

“Okay. They’re closed.”

I open the door, my lips twitching at the sight of him blindly and dutifully awaiting whatever I’ve cooked up for him. I take his hands in mine and pull him into the room. I shut the door with a click behind us.

“Alright,” I say, sitting down on the mattress. “You can look.”

He does. His eyes widen as they reflect the glow of our surroundings. He inhales sharply, mouth parting slightly in amazement. I bite my lip as I watch him take it all in. The clustering tangles of orange bittersweet vine that are threaded through the curtain rods over the windows, circling the frame of the mirror, draped over the headboard of our bed. The tea candles, set in glass jam jars to catch the wax, set out on the side tables and the hope chest and on the windowsills — except for the tall red ones in my grandmother’s candlesticks, proudly displayed beside our presents. My best attempt to turn our bedroom into the autumn woods of our early courtship.

“Do you like it?” I ask. “It’s a little messy, but — ”

Peeta’s awed gaze comes to rest on me. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” he says. He crosses to me, cradles my face and tilts my head up to look at him. “You did all this for me?”

“Gale and Prim helped,” I shrug.

“Don’t be humble, Katniss. It’s beautiful.” He kisses my forehead, the bridge of my nose, my lips. I wrap my arms around his neck and deepen the kiss. He cups my jaw and his mouth delves mine with a sweet fervor that makes something coil low in my body. There’s no danger of his mother walking in on us here, no wedding to wait for, nothing but us to stop us.

I draw away for breath. The aster in Peeta’s hair has come loose and I pluck it out from behind his ear.

“Thief. My wife gave me that,” he says. He snatches it back and sets it on the armoire with the other presents. “There.” He notices the bottle of whiskey and picks it up, looking at me quizzically.

“This is not from your mother, I’m guessing?”

“Haymitch,” I laugh. “Well, Prim.”

“Shall we?”

“I’ve never had any before,” I say. “I’m not sure how I feel about it.” I’ve seen what alcohol can do to people. I don’t know if it’s different in other places where they have less to run away from, but in 12, it’s almost never good. But that’s usually Ripper’s powerful white liquor. Maybe this is different.

“Me neither. Tell you what, let’s have one sip,” Peeta suggests, splashing amber liquid into two glasses. “If we don’t like it I’ll bake it into something instead.”

“That’s one way to guarantee I won’t like it,” I say. I’ll take Peeta’s baked goods over Haymitch’s booze any day.

He sits beside me on the bed and raises his drink high. “Wife.”

“Husband,” I play along.

We clink our glasses together and take a tentative sip. I regret it the second the whiskey passes my lips. The taste is sour and overwhelming. The scent fills my nose and makes my eyes sting. I set the glass down hard on the side table, where it clatters against the candles. Peeta chokes on his own drink and pulls a face.

“That was a mistake,” I hiccup. “Mistake.”

“Into a glaze it goes,” Peeta coughs. “Sweet mercy.”

Suddenly we’re both laughing, not because of the alcohol, but because of our simultaneous reactions of disgust. It’s not even that funny, but it’s such a good feeling I give myself over to it, lying back on the bed and giggling until my stomach aches. Peeta flops down next to me, bouncing slightly, and that brings on another round of mirth from both of us. I don’t understand how he does this to me, but I love him for it. I toe my boots off and let them fall to the floor. Twin thumps tell me he’s done the same with his dress shoes, and for some reason the clunking sound sets us both off again.

Our laughter subsides in stops and restarts until we’re lying in companionable silence, side by side. I feel a heavy sense of rest. I have no desire to move. I might be content to call it a night, were it not for my curiosity to rekindle the heat that zipped through me on the porch. _Body and heart,_ say the toasting vows. I want that. I’m ready — but I’m at a loss for where to begin.

I turn my head to look at him, eyes closed behind those feathery lashes of his. I reach over and set my hand on his chest, feeling his breath rise and fall. His fingers close over mine. His thumb traces circles on my wrist and with each pass I feel that coil in my stomach grow tighter, forcing the words up before I can swallow them back. “So — um — do you want have sex or something?”

Peeta startles out of his doze and I cringe like I’ve bitten into a lemon. “There were about a hundred better ways to say that,” I whisper, mortified.

“Your way was fine,” he whispers back. “Of course I want to.”

I roll onto my side. “Yeah?”

He rolls to mirror me, our hands twining on the coverlet. “Yeah.” His eyes dart down the length of my body, then back up to my face. “Where did you want to start?”

“Kiss me?” I say. That’s easy. That’s come to us naturally, since that summer night I attacked him in the violet patch. I clear my throat and say it again, a plea instead of a question. “Kiss me.”

It must have been the right thing to say because his pupils dilate and before I can open my mouth to ask again, it’s preoccupied with his in a kiss that starts slowly and grows more full and heated by the second. His arm slips under my back to cradle my body to him, the other arm encircling my hips. I thread one stockinged leg between his knees. The coil in my lower body must be like the coils of conducting wire they teach about in school, because something electric is pulsing from its source, running down my legs and up my spine. I’m almost frightened at the speed at which its intensity is building, but I don’t want it to stop. Except it does stop, because Peeta is rolling me onto my back, and the unexpected switch in position squashes the air out of me. I break the kiss, laughing and pushing at my husband’s shoulders. “Off,” I manage.

“What is it?” he fusses, propping himself up on his elbows and looking worriedly down at me. I shake my head and reach my thumb up to touch his bottom lip, reddened by the eagerness of mine.

“You squished me,” I say, and his concerned expression turns into one of mischief. “Peeta don’t — oof!”

He doesn’t really put his deadweight on top of me but I squirm to dislodge him. He doesn’t relent, adding mock insult to injury by caging my face between his palms and pecking my nose and forehead like a pestering bird, only with sloppily landed kisses instead of sharp nips from a beak.

“Fine!” I cry, going limp. “You win.”

There’s a light sweat on our brows and we’re both panting. I can feel his chest and pelvis rise and fall against mine and it becomes apparent to me that my attempts to free myself have had an effect on my husband. He realizes it at the same moment I do.

“Um …” he says. “Sorry.” He looks self-conscious, but I feel empowered.

“Don’t apologize.” I reply. “It is our toasting night, after all.”

“I really want you,” he says, nuzzling my neck and sending a jolt through my body that makes my own pelvis buck involuntarily.

It’s my turn to be abashed and I let out a small squeak, but Peeta doesn’t care. His lips move, half-parted, along my throat, and I let my head loll to the side. It feels so good, so impossibly good. “You have me,” I say, though it comes out as more a whimper. “You can have me.”

At my permission he lifts his head, studies me for a heartbeat, so tenderly, then leans down to bump his nose against mine. I’m reminded somehow, ridiculously, of Buttercup doing the same to Prim. But thoughts of my sister and her cat are driven quickly from my mind as my fingers catch undecidedly on Peeta’s top shirt button. It’s my turn to ask permission.

“May I?” I say. He sits back on his knees and I follow, keeping a hold of his shirt as I sit up. I peer closer at the buttons of his shirt and bite my lip in delight.

“Did you paint these?” I say. Each of the four buttons has been painted with tiny, tiny detailing: each a different flower. One bluebell, one dandelion, one summer violet, and the one my fingers rest on, a katniss flower that matches my stockings.

“My eyes may never be the same,” he answers. “Squinting over these. But — well, I thought my wedding clothes could be special too.”

It’s like exploring my own personal garden, as I admire the designs on each button before slipping them free of the buttonhole. I’m so absorbed in my task, so entranced by my husband’s skill, that I forget what I’m doing until I’m already pushing the fabric of the dress shirt from his broad shoulders, feeling the warmth of his body beneath my hands as I let the shirt crumple on the pillows and run my fingers lightly up his back, his pale skin flushing at my touch.

He doesn’t give us the chance to be too shy though. “Your turn,” he says, and pulls me to him so I’m straddling his lap. His hands work quicker than mine. Can’t blame him for that. There’s nothing special about the buttons of my dress. He has them undone in less than a minute, leaving my dress draped over me like the red wings of a cardinal bird.

The air of the room is a cool contrast to the flush of my skin. Peeta looks at me, seemingly overwhelmed at this point.

“We’re never going to get anywhere at this rate,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow at me. “That a challenge?” he says.

“Might be.”

“That’s a mistake, Everdeen,” he says. “You’re married to a two time wrestling runner up here.”

“I’m aware,” I say, gripping his arms. “It shows. And it’s ‘Mellark’ to you, sir.”

I’m not sure if it was the “Mellark” or the “sir” but my red dress is over my head and tossed on the floor before I have time to be shy about it — and I’m just in my plain underthings and my stockings.

“Is this … ?” He caresses up my legs to my makeshift garters. “Is this my ribbon?”

I nod. “I couldn’t leave it in the scrap bag, could I?”

“No,” he says, eyes drinking me in, heavy with desire. I’m shaken by it, in the best possible way. “No … that would be … not good …” he finishes inelegantly. My hands find purchase in his curls, but his are everywhere: down my thighs, squeezing my hips, sliding up my back, finding the cotton band of my bra.

“This alright?”

“Yes,” I gasp. There’s the click of the clasp coming undone and my skin pebbles with goosebumps.

Peeta holds the discarded garment in a ball for a second, gazing at me, then comes to himself and unfurls it to fold on the bedside table. I fight the urge to laugh at this neatness only for a heartbeat because as soon as he has done that he tips me back onto the bed again, and his fingers are skimming reverently over the small swells of my breasts, sending cold shivers and sparks of heat through me. I don’t even try to fight back the whine that escapes me.

“Katniss,” he breathes. It’s like he can’t manage any more than the awed murmuring of my name. “Katniss.”

“You should ... your clothes …” I say, but before I’m quite finished his mouth finds my left breast, eliciting a startled squeak at the suddenness of it.

“Sorry!” he exclaims, head popping back up. “I’m sorry … only you said it … is this okay? I don’t mean to …”

“It’s okay,” I say, carding my fingers through his hair, brushing the tips of his ears. “More than okay. It feels good. Keep going.”

“You sure?”

“Completely.” I know we look ridiculous, inexperienced and over enthusiastic as we are, but I’m far past caring. I hoist my legs up, and—after a bit of maneuvering, complicated by the feel of his mouth now at my right breast and his fingers clumsily circling and plucking at my left, making me dizzy—I hook my toes at his belt and try to shove his slacks down with my feet, but he stops me.

“Slow down,” he laughs softly. “Slow down, Katniss. We have all night. And all morning. We only get one toasting night. I want to enjoy it.”

“I am enjoying it. Aren’t you?”

“Very much,” he says. “But let’s make it last.”

So we do. We take our time, drawing this out in languid kisses and lazily traversing hands, in sighs exchanged between our lips, in skipping heartbeats. Peeta pulls the flowers from my braided crown and drops them to the floor in a snowfall of petals and pins, freeing my hair of its plaits and running his fingers through my loose tresses until I’m fairly keening at the sensation. But for all that, it’s still an awkward, somewhat sweaty tangle of shifting and readjusting our limbs, of laughing as I struggle to get his pants off, of curious fumbling between each other’s thighs. At last, it’s just us in the middle of the quilt. Our wedding clothes are strewn about us on the floor like autumn leaves strewn on the floor of the forest. 

I stare up at him. We could be underwater, the way the light plays on the slats of our ceiling. His lips twitch tenderly. He looks as nervous and as longing I feel.

“Come here.” I pull him down to me. He rests his forehead against my temple and we breathe each other in. The weight of his body makes me feel safe, protected, even though there’s nothing to be afraid of.

“You ready?”

“Yes,” I say. I want him. I need him. “I’m ready.”

I’m prepared to be uncomfortable, when it comes to it — and it is, a little. It’s an odd, pinched feeling. It hurts, but nothing worse than I’ve handled before. I must wince or grunt or something, because Peeta freezes. “Did I hurt you? We can stop.”

“No,” I gasp, pushing damp curls back from his face, which is flushed with emotion and effort. “No, you didn’t. You couldn’t. It’s just … new. Can we go slow? Like you said?”

He nods. “We can go slow. Of course.” His hand tucks a flyaway of hair behind my ear.“Anything you want. Tell me when you’re ready.”

“Okay,” I sigh, doing my best to relax. That’s not hard, with how gentle his eyes are, looking at me like I’m some precious thing.

“You’re so … you’re … I love you. I can’t believe you’re my wife.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” I say, my legs squeezing him closer to me. My thumbs trace his cheekbones. The pain has eased up, and I rub his calf with my stockinged foot. “Okay,” I whisper. “Go ahead.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He kisses me as he obliges me, adjusting his hips so that our bodies are flush, and very tentatively starting to move. I’m swept away in a haze of feeling. Of pain fading into pleasure, though not exactly the sunburst that’s hinted at in some of 12’s more raucous drinking songs. I wasn’t expecting that the first time. But it doesn’t matter, because all of that comes second to the innocent excitement of being skin to skin, the feeling of being so close, so incredibly close, to this sweet boy who chose me, of all the wild things in the world, to love. Of being knit together, trembling and messily kissing as we are. Of being whole.

It isn’t very long before Peeta grips the sheets on either side of me. He presses his forehead to mine and I reach up to cradle his face as he groans my name before half collapsing into my arms. We hold each other, catching our breath, our hearts racing, and I don’t think I can remember the last time I’ve felt this good, this happy.

“You didn’t …” Peeta starts to apologize as he regains his senses.

“Next time,” I say, knowing he’s referring to the not yet sated ache in the deep of my body. I stroke the back of his neck. “Next time.”  
  
“Are you sure?”

”I’m sure.” I turn my head to kiss him. “It was good, Peeta. I mean that.” 

We drowse, absently caressing as we slip in and out of dreamy reality. The candles are burning low when Peeta disentangles himself from my body. I make a sleepy noise of complaint and reach for him. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” he assures me, squeezing my hand. “Just to get this.” The bowl of warm water and the cloth.

“Oh,” I say, remembering my mother’s warning. “Bring that vial too.”

He brings them over to the bedside table. Peeta soaks the cloth and rings it out. I unstopper the Rachel’s Wort, downing a gulp. Peeta sits down next to me and nudges my knees.

“Oh, I can do that,” I say, feeling, ironically, naked, for the first time tonight.

“No, let me. I want to.”

I hesitate, and then—because if I can’t be vulnerable with him, who can I be vulnerable with?—I do as he asks, letting my thighs fall apart. “You’re too good to me,” I say as he bathes my sore flesh. 

“I didn’t say I was doing this free of charge,” he says.

“Oh? And what are you asking in return?”

“A song,” he says. “Our song.”

He means the song I sang for his birthday, the one I wrote. Scribbled, more like, on a spare envelope of Prim’s nice stationary. It’s woefully short of what my father could have done, but I’m proud of it, if only for the way it makes Peeta’s eyes light up.

_you gave the gift of home and hearth and heart so easily_

_I know you wouldn’t ask for more_

_least of all from me_

_but I don’t love my halves, my dear_

_this you know is true_

_I’d fly up to the starry sky to catch the moon for you_

_catch the moon, catch the moon_

_fly away and catch the moon_

_no, I don’t love my halves, my dear_

_this you know is true_

_I’d fly up to the starry sky to catch the moon for you_

Peeta leans down to kiss my nose. “Thank you.”

“Hey,” I suggest, as he sets the cloth over the bowl again. “Do you want to open our presents?”

He looks like a child on Parcel Day at that idea. I sit up and he sets the packages on our bed. We crawl under the quilt to keep warm while we unwrap them.

“This one first,” I say proudly, presenting him with the box. The way he examines it makes me curious if he’s ever had a real present before. He carefully undoes the twine. I hug my knees and prop my chin atop them in anticipation of his reaction.

He tears the paper away to reveal what I got him: a cloth bound sketchbook, a set of four watercolor paints in little jars, and the nicest charcoal pencils I could get in 12. Prim offered to send away to the Capitol for an expensive collection, but I didn’t want anything from the city that parades my sister around every year during Game season. I wanted something from home, homemade or bought with my own earnings.

Peeta’s mouth drops open in delight. He takes the jar of blue paint and holds it in his palms.

“Did you make these?”

I nod. “The blue smells of boiled red cabbage,” I warn him. “The red is beet root. The green is spinach. The yellow is clay powder.” I bump his shoulder. “I asked my mother if violets would make a good purple, but no luck.”

“You spoil me.”

“You deserve it,” I say with a shrug.

He sets his box down and holds his finger up in a “wait a second” gesture. He reaches over to the side table and from the drawer he pulls something he must have asked Prim to put in here earlier: a sachet with a drawstring.

“Now yours.”

“Thank you.” I pluck the drawstring and tip the contents into my hand. A ring rolls into my palm and it’s my turn to gape. This ring must be a family heirloom, like Granny Everdeen’s candles, because it’s far too lovely to have come from 12. A battered, well worn band, set with a smooth, green stone.

“Is this … this isn’t real gold?”

“It is,” he says as I turn it over. “That stone’s something called jade, I think? It was Granny’s. I don’t know how long it’s been in the family. Since before the Dark Days. She gave it to me before she died. Didn’t want my mother to have it.”

“I … Peeta … this …” It’s novel for couples to be able to afford rings, let alone real gold ones, but that isn’t what touches me. This was his grandmother’s. He’s spoken about Jenny Ann Mellark before. He loved her. Probably more than he loved anyone else in his family. He was her favorite too. Her little sunshine, she called him.

“I think she’d like you to have it. I know she would.”

I slip the ring onto my wedding finger. “Perfect fit,” I marvel.

“Not a surprise. Granny had real artist’s hands. Slender ones, like yours,” he says. “Not baker’s mitts,” he jokes and I roll my eyes fondly and pull him to me for a kiss.

“I love your hands,” I say, as one gently traces down my front, breastbone to stomach. “So,” I say, taking the final package and setting it between us, “no more of that talk.”

Peeta smiles. “Best mind my wife.”

“You’d best.”

“Whose is this?”

“Not sure,” I say. “Another from Prim? Let’s see.”

But what rests atop the gift inside is a note from my mother.

_To begin your toasting quilt. With all my love, to both of you._

“One for each of us.” I unfold the two quilt squares. We’ll add another two squares for each year of our marriage. Our toasting quilt. Our future, laid in pretty patterning over my lap.

Peeta isn’t paying attention to the quilt. He’s rereading my mother’s note, like it’s the best part of the gift.

 _With all my love, to both of you._ The thing his mother should have given him … my mother did. I’ve never felt more indebted to her. 

When we’re finished admiring them, Peeta returns the presents to their place on the armoire. The candles are burning out, and the moonlight is making up for them, pouring in blue waves through the window. My husband stretches and yawns.

“Come to bed,” I yawn in sympathy.

Peeta pauses at the footboard. “Say that again,” he says.

I hold out a hand. “Come to bed,” I repeat and laugh when he practically dives under the covers and into my embrace.

“Hi.” His eyes are half light.

“Hey.” I’m already drifting.

“When we wake up, let’s make breakfast. Enough raisin buns for your family … and Haymitch too. They’ve done so much for us.”

“Raisin buns,” I mumble in approval, my heart so full for this generous boy I can hardly stand it and my eyes so heavy I can’t keep them open. “Sounds good.”

I blink awake into an autumn morning glittering with frost on the windowpane. I feel more well rested than I’ve been in years. I’ve got some aches in my body from walking and dancing and loving, but it’s a welcome ache. It means yesterday wasn’t a dream. I’m in bed with my husband, his strong arm slung over my bare waist. He’s snoring into the crook of my neck, breath warm and tickling a little. I hold up my hand with Jenny Ann’s ring on it, let it catch the golden light.

_don’t tell a soul_

_they’d only be jealous_

_cause I’ve got a boy_

_sweet like cider_

I smirk as I feel him stir, roused by my voice. I keep singing.

_sugar and spice_

_like I’ve never tasted_

_drunk on your love_

_sweetheart of mine_

“Is that me?”

I laugh. “That’s you.”

“Thought so. It’s a dangerous ego boost, wife.”

I turn to look at him. His eyes are so blue. Like cornflowers. “Then I’d better put you in your place, husband. Where are my raisin buns?”

In answer, I get a light squeeze of my backside and squeak in indignation as I push his chest.

“Raisin buns can keep,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Last night you said,” he reminds me, “next time.” He cups my breast. I inhale, soft and sharp. He reaches an arm under me to cradle my shoulders and neck, lifting me ever so slightly up from the pillow.

“Yes,” I say, steepling my fingertips against his chin. “I did.”

He skates a hand down below my navel and I squirm. “Good,” he says. His hand caresses me and a shock of sensation makes my body twitch. “Is this alright?” he checks. “You’re not too sore?”

“No,” I rush to assure him. “No, I’m not.”

That’s all it takes. My husband’s hands touch me gently where I want him the most. They throw our comforter back, tracing and bracing my sides as his mouth lavishes a path from my breasts to my belly to my thighs.

Peeta nips softly at the top of the stocking, where the red ribbon has come askew in my sleep, and grins when I squeak. His hands tug the stockings down and his lips greet every inch of skin as it’s revealed.

I fight an urge to cover my face with my hands when he tosses the stockings to the floor. It’s not like they were doing anything for my modesty, but I feel more exposed without them. That was probably his intent in the first place.

“Uh …” Peeta says. “I’m not really sure what I’m doing.”

“That’s fine,” I pant. “I don’t care.”

“Well, you will if I’m terrible,” he chuckles. He holds my parted legs steady. “But … I really want to make you feel good.”

“You already do.”

“Can’t go wrong then,” he teases and dips his head.

They tell us all the time about how luxurious the Capitol is. They shove it down our throats every Game season. Prim tells me it’s worse in person. They make it seem like you couldn’t possibly live without this scrap of silk, this bauble, this flashing screen, this sickly perfume. But as my head tips back and my eyes flutter closed around a gilt edge of sunlight, I know they’re wrong. _This_ is the only luxury I’ll ever need. A feeling like the one I get when I sing overtakes me, all tremors and flutters in my nerves. But no melodies leave me, just broken fragments of half pleas and praises as the feeling rushes, peaks, balances on a precipice for a hazy heartbeat … then falls … leaving me crying out and trembling and leaving my husband looking far too pleased with himself for a first attempt.

“Where … who … ?”

“No one,” he says, climbing back up my body to kiss me. “But when you have brothers, you hear things.”

I exhale a sated raspberry. “Some hearing you have.”

“I imagine,” he says, stroking my hair, “that if I never improved on that for the rest of our marriage you’d come to be disappointed in it.”

“I couldn’t be disappointed in you.”

“But are you going to stop me practicing?” he asks with a glint in his eye.

“Absolutely not,” I say.

I’d be content to spend the rest of the day in bed, were it not for the promised raisin buns, and eventually, slowly, we get up, stretching in the pale sunlight. We pick up our discarded wedding clothes and fold them neatly on the hope chest. We make our bed and dress in sleep clothes, neither of us wanting to rush. I ball my stockings up, but take the ribbons to the standing mirror.

 _Two braids instead of one,_ I think, recalling Peeta’s first memory of me, when we were in kindergarten. I comb out my hair and plait it in a quick pair of braids, each tied with red ribbon. Our courtship is over, but these are staying.

Peeta wraps his arms around me from behind and kisses my cheek. I smile at our reflection. Both of us barefoot on the hardwood, rumpled and happy. Held in amber.

No matter what lies ahead, this moment will be preserved in my memory for the rest of my life, like the familiar words of a hearthsong.

Gale’s words from two days ago come to me out of the blue. “And now I’m an old biddy,” I giggle.

“What?” Peeta laughs. “You’re a what now?”

“Something silly,” I say, my mind on raisin buns and tea, and hauling my new husband back upstairs to love him at least twice more before lunchtime. “I’ll tell you later.” And I will. I’ve got my whole life.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you make it? Do you need a toothbrush? 
> 
> A couple of notes about the songs, because what is Hearthsong if not chock full of them? 
> 
> The first songs Katniss mentions, the songs her dad used to talk about, “Gold Up in the Mountains” and “Hickory Choppin’” are inventions of mine and don’t have lyrics. The third song, “Harvest Moon” is also an invention of mine, and is a full fledged macabre dancing song about the reaping. I may post it in full somewhere if anyone is interested. “Sweet Like Cider” is a self-invention as well, as are Mrs. Everdeen’s hearthsong (“Yours and Mine”) and Katniss’s song for Peeta (“Catch the Moon.”) You can sing all of them; I gave them all tunes and made sure! 
> 
> The threshold song is a real song. It’s called “Love’s Old Sweet Song” and is an 1800s parlor song that Pa Ingalls sings to Laura the night before she is to be married in “These Happy Golden Years.” Mr. Everdeen has immaculate Pa Ingalls vibes in my mind, and it seemed exactly the sort of song he would sing to his own little “half pint” if he could be there on her wedding day. “Goodbye Liza Jane” and “Rattlin’ Bog,” the songs Madge plays at the piano, are both real songs, both fast and lively, and perfect for the backwoods of Appalachia I think! 
> 
> Rachel's Wort isn't a real thing; I pulled the name from the Bible, because it's sort of a significant plot point that Rachel, Jacob's wife, can't have kids (well, at first). I could have gone with Sarah's Wort too I suppose. I don't know. I just needed a made up name for a contraceptive. Not that you were taking safe sex advice from a fanfic, but don't. :D
> 
> Maybe drop a comment if you like! ☺️
> 
> Thank you for reading … and Happy Holidays!


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